Sunday @ 2pm

Hi all. Just wanted to update you on Aidan.


He came off the insulin drip and IV's this morning between 10am and 11am.


I made it to the hospital shortly before 1am this morning and spent an hour chatting with his nurse really trying to understand what was going on. Apparently we were initially given some wrong information from the first ER that Aidan was admitted to.


DKA can (and in Aidan's case did) cause an elevated white blood cell count. Typically, in a NON diabetic an infection would be the likely cause of elevated counts, but when dealing with diabetics I guess it's a whole different ballgame.


With Aidan, yesterday was caused by low CO2 levels in his blood. The lower the reading the more acidic the blood. Normal is 22-26, when Aidan was admitted his CO2 level was at an 8. I was so worried we had done something "wrong" but felt a tiny bit better when his nurse said there is NO way to check CO2 levels at home. She said professionals or parents over time can sometimes learn to notice a difference in the child's breathing.. The only thing we could have done differently is made a call sooner. But even doing that can be difficult as he's been sick with stomach bugs before and has had much MUCH higher blood sugar readings then he did yesterday (mid 200's) and has been just fine. So... I guess we error on the side of caution in the future, even if it means being the "annoying paranoid" parents who call EVERYTIME their child is sick.


Anyway as I said I got to the hospital around 1am, chatted with his nurse until around 2am, then tried to get some sleep, although it was difficult as the lights here are VERY bright and they came every hour to check his vitals and blood sugar levels. They also needed to wake him up completely from his sleep to "check on his brain functioning". Apparently when CO2 levels drop as significantly as Aidan's did, one of the reasons it is so dangerous is because it can affect neurological functioning and abilities. So his nurse would wake him up, ask him his middle name, how many brothers and sisters he has, his phone number etc... What a trooper he was, he DOES not like being woken up.


This morning I had to leave between 7-8am as no parents or visitors are allowed during shift changes. I went down to the cafeteria for breakfast as I am not allowed to bring ANY outside food or drink into the PICU... you can probably guess this was one of few mornings I did not have my egg whites and oatmeal. I settled for a lowfat yogurt and "whole wheat" bagel and of course a LARGE cup of coffee.


I returned to the room and Aidan was already starting on breakfast, about halfway through he started screaming, which quite honestly freaked me out. One minute he was fine and the next it was drama city. So I quickly poked my head out the door looking for his nurse. She came in right away and we were able to get Aidan calmed down enough to explain what the problem was. His throat hurt. When the nurse took a look she said "oh yea, it's very red, and very inflamed" which of course was caused by all of the vomiting yesterday. So he cried his way through the remainder of breakfast... poor little guy.


Around 11am his nurse came in and disconnected all his IV's. There were 4 of them, One was an insulin drip, one sugar water to balance the insulin, one regular fluid and I can't remember the fourth. He is still hooked up to the heart monitor, blood pressure machine and one other thing I can't figure out and always forget to ask about.


Around 11:15 I was told to go ahead and start him back on his Omnipod. Upon removing the old one that was deactivated yesterday I discovered there was a HORRIBLE kink in the cannula, or tube that gets inserted under his skin. However looking through the view window this kink was not visible, but once the pod was removed it was more then apparent. This was really frustrating as about a month ago we had FIVE pods give off false alarms for "occlusions detected" and yet there wasn't a thing wrong with those five pods. This time something WAS wrong and no alarm.

And now my baby is in the hospital suffering from something that can be life threatening. Needless to say Darren will be calling the manufacturing company tomorrow morning. Aidan's Dr. said that definitely could be what instigated this whole thing... and what set the DKA in motion.


Around 1130 I checked Aidan's blood sugar and it was high, mid 300's but I expected this as he did not get insulin for breakfast because of the switch from the insulin drip back to his pod. Within 30 minutes he was down to 250 and it was time for lunch. Turkey sandwich and chips. He got through half the sandwich and started screaming again, just about made me cry, his throat hurts so bad.


Darren came and picked me up for lunch, of course we had limited options around downtown and so Mexican was the verdict. My treadmill is going to cringe when it sees me again. On the way back to the hospital Asher unbuckled his car seat and stood up in it. but that's another story. On the way back we got a call from the hospital that Aidan's sugar's had spiked and he was sitting at 460. UGH! However upon further investigation we found out they checked him immediately after he ate, which quite frankly is kinda dumb.


Anyway he played and we watched a bit of TV and he is now sleeping. He does still have large ketones in his urine, so they'll be keeping him here in PICU a bit longer. We probably won't get him down to the regular floor until bedtime.


Darren and Asher dropped me off and headed to the JDRF walk for the cure. We were able to raise almost 2x what we did from our 1st walk in march, so that's pretty good.


Thanks for all your prayers and we'll keep you posted.