Diabetes Crashes our Vacation

3.2 (57)..what in the world is that?? Holy cow, its a low!! And of course it happened at 2:30am but it was a low.  I don't think I have seen one of those since back in June.  My son has either been in range or running on high, high and higher for the bulk of the summer. This was especially the case on our recent trip into the Eastern United States.

A couple of weeks ago, we picked my son up from his father's house and headed off on a road trip.  We stopped in New Brunswick long enough to drop off our dogs with my aunt before making our way to the border.  We here headed to New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. 

Our first day of travel went alright.  There were a few highs and I joked about the last time we had made this trip.  My son had been in double digits the entire time we were south of the border. I swore that the second we crossed back into Canada he instantly dropped back down into range. I was hoping that this trip would be much better and so far so good!

I should not have jinxed myself.  Day two saw his readings begin to creep up.  We added a travel basal and continued to hope for the best.  Driving and highs are not a good combination.  Driving, highs and freeways are an even worse combination.  My son was not happy knowing that he was high and neither was I.  We both wanted to enjoy the scenery, not stress over diabetes.

By the third day, Diabetes had created a complete trainwreck for us to deal with.  We had put in a new belly site and then, my son being a teen, had also enjoyed a monster sized breakfast with a triple digit carb load.  We headed down the highway and I was nervous as to how well we had counted the carbs and whether his system would handle all of the food he had ingested. It didn't take long to find out how badly things could turn.

"Mom, I'm high."
You mean that you are high?
"No, I mean I am HI.  No reading. Just HI"
Crap! You have lots of water?
"Yes"
You have a new site and new insulin?
"Yes"
Maybe the site is bad. 

As we are driving down the freeway to our New Jersey destination, I had my son pass me insulin, alcohol and a syringe. I was going to deal with this disaster head on.  We continued down the interstate and I calculate the correction dose for my son. I don't want to rely on a site that seems to be toast so it was time to stab him and pray he would start to come down.

He then prepared a new site for himself and added a new resevoir of insulin.  We continue driving and I hoped that ketones would not develop.  Having to use the washroom while speeding down an interstate is bad enough but to have to vomit as well in sweltering heat would be the worst. Thankfully multiple injections, water, and a new site seem to do the trick.  After a number of hours and another injection--just in case, his readings finally came down into the low double digits (200s).  We could almost live with that.

We began to more aggressively bolus his meals in hopes of beating Diabetes at its own game.  If I thought a meal should be 50g of carbohydrates, we bolused 75.  It seemed to work...until the next site failure but that was a little further into the trip.