Our crucial tools right now are these:

They include a OneTouch Ultra2 blood glucose meter, testing strips (shockingly expensive), finger-poker, finger-poking needles, BG 33 syringes in .5 unit increments, Novolog (fast-acting insulin), Lantus (slow-acting insulin), Ketostix, our EatSmart Nutrition scale, and DiabetesPilot, an iPhone app for logging virtually everything that happens during our day. Oh, and our glucagon emergency pen, glucose tabs, and PediaSure. These are all of the things that we now need to keep Ainsley alive and healthy. This does not include her new dietary requirements. Here’s  a breakdown:

OneTouch BG Meter: we use this to check her blood sugars throughout the day and night. We poke her finger with the poker. We start with the thumb before breakfast and work our way across the fingers and then the toes as needed. We poke to the sides of the finger rather than the pads to minimize pain.  We insert a test strip in the meter, get a nice fat drop of blood on it, and in 5 seconds it tells us her real-time blood glucose.

Novolog: this is the insulin we administer with food. We use a carb-to-insulin ratio to determine how much to give her. Right now she stands at about 25:1, meaning 25 carbs to 1 units of insulin.

Lantus: this is her long-acting insulin. We give this at night. It acts over 24 hours, reducing her overall BG and acting as a buffer to “soak up” variables, of which there are many. We recently reduced her Lantus dose because she was waking up “low” every morning in the 80s. Now her daytime sugars are a mess. Back to the drawing board.

Ketostix: we use these to test her urine for ketones whenever she gets sick. We test every 3 hours, along with blood sugar. This lets us know if she is slipping into Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA), aka BIG BIG TROUBLE.

Food scale: we just recently got this and it is a savior. It is giving us much more accuracy. Instead of conjecturing how large a “large” banana is, I can just weigh it and know for sure how many carbs are in it. We start by weighing her plate and then each food, counting carbs as we go. Then we know how much insulin to give. It’s important to be slow, careful, and methodical.

DiabetesPilot: this is just one of many logging tools. It’s handy because my phone is always with me. I make entries throughout the day for all of her food, BG results, insulin, notes about details, everything. It tracks her averages, yields reports, and estimates her A1C – that all-important number that tells us how well we are controlling her sugars overall. Right now, at 8.2 that number is not great, but it’s a lot better than the 11 when she was diagnosed.

Glucagon:  we use this if she drops dangerously low (i.e. she passes out and is unresponsive). The syringe contains powdered glucagon (a hormone equivalent to major sugar). You mix it with the liquid in the vial, shake it up, and stab her in the hip. It will bring her back from any super low and may make her super high, but won’t kill her. We keep one of these everywhere.

Glucose tabs: one way to give her a controlled dose of sugar when she’s too low. I keep a bottle in my purse.

Pediasure: this is what we give her when she refuses to eat. Because we have to dose her before she eats, we must then make sure that we back that insulin with enough carbs or it’s going to put her blood glucose through the floor. Pediasure tastes like chocolate milk to make sure the kiddos drink it when they need to, and the doubled edge of that sword is that . . . it tastes like chocolate milk.  She has now figured out that she can refuse to eat and get one. Don’t be surprised if I’m bald when next you see me.