When Arden’s BG is too high for too long she begins to suffer from painful leg cramping.  It wakes her in the middle of the night and the only thing that helps is constant rubbing.  This is a very common issue with Type I diabetics.

Aside from Arden’s pain, it is as you may know draining to not get a full nights sleep -- ever.  So it takes a toll on us too.  Though to be honest Arden wants her mom in these situations so it’s mostly Kel’s burden to carry.  All I have to endure is Kelly reminding me of said burden. (Arguments can be made from either side as to which is worse.) 

We constantly struggle to get and maintain the tightest control of Arden’s BG as possible.  The more comfortable we become managing the disease the braver we get about injecting insulin in the late evening.  Last night was one of those brave nights...  Especially since she had bad cramping the evening before.

Arden got snacky before bed.  She ate and because we were outside of her slow acting insulin’s (Levemir) effective periodand her fast acting (NovoLog) insulin, injections were necessary.  Normally had she not eaten I would have been able to just give a half unit of Lev and put her to bed.  The issue is that the food she took in drove her BG up and though the Lev would drag it back down overnight, it would take too long leaving her BG too high and among other (horrible) things cause the cramping.  So she needs Nov too.

I draw a syringe with just under a half of Lev and make up the rest with Nov.  Just the tiniest amount.  If I gave her that amount right now her BG would barely move but as we know sleeping really ratchets up the effectiveness for some reason.  So I did what I thought was right trying to err on the side of caution without risky an overnight high.

But I was wrong... 

So at exactly 4:38 am Arden’s BG was 65 and she needed to eat.  But she didn’t want juice or a cookie or anything that would have been easy.  There we all sat, at a quarter to five in the morning watching Arden eat a bowl of Fruit Loops in our bed.

This scene is playing out in countless parents beds all over the country, every night and it will continue to as long as diabetes goes uncured.