Omnipod Tool

This idea came from our wonderful school nurse, who is amazing and deserves a parade down main street, a key to the city and a day named after her. When Bean started pumping the endo team recommended that we use sport wrist bands to support the pod on her arms. Bean has scrawny arms and the pod will flop if unsupported. It bothers her and worries her caretakers that some other kid will rip it off.
So I ran down to the local party store and picked up a package of wrist bands. Only to bad for me it didn't work so well. They were too tight and uncomfortable. Next we tried an ace bandage. But this was even worse, way too tight and very ugly. 9 year old girls do not do ugly. We then tried some medical tape and that worked ok but it wasn't easy to take off if you wanted to check the site.
And then the nurse sent her home wearing a sock on her arm! The nurse had cut the toe, heel and top off and used the part between the heel and toe as a support band. And it works great. Bean can easily take it on and off on her own, we've picked up cute socks at the dollar store with cute pictures to make more girlie ones. I also picked up some iron on patches so she can do an arts and craft project to make more. It's such a great idea I had to share.

Scary Saturday...

Friday night Bean asked me to make waffles for breakfast. On the weekends I usually do bigger breakfasts as it's my favorite meal. I agreed to make her eggs, sausage and a waffle that following morning.

I had tested her at 12 am and her blood sugar was a little high but nothing alarming. We then got up at 8 am and needed to rush my car over to the shop before doing breakfast. Bean seemed fine when she got up, we grabbed her kit and drove the few blocks to the shop. Along the way she started complaining that she was hungry and wanted waffles - really, really bad. Then she said she felt sick and puked in the parking lot. Poor girl. We had her test. 426!

So we rushed home to check ketones. Man that stick darkened so fast - the high end of moderate. I started shoving flavored water into her. She complained about being hungry but I didn't want her to eat carbs until we knew if the correction +10% worked. Thank god for cheese sticks and a fried egg. 2 hours go by with lots of peeing, demands for waffles and we tested again. This time the meter said HIGH! That's not very helpful - numbers I can understand but the words HIGH are so so scary. It's hard to put in perspective. What's higher than HIGH? At what number does it stop being a number and displays HIGH?

We do a syringe correction and a pod change. The tube is completely kinked in half and now we have the source of the insanity. I call the endo's office and the nurse line is closed, the answer service isn't turned on and I sit on hold for an hour. The office is open so I'm not sure why no one answered. We decide to test everything again with in that hour and if there was no improvement we'd take her into the ER.

Lucky for us her blood sugars came down as did the ketones. Another hour later she was dancing in the kitchen singing about wanting waffles - which she got for dinner.