Pudding.

A few months ago, Sugar's A1c shot up by half a percent.  It wasn't the actual number that was so concerning...it was more the fact that she had lost some weight, in addition to seeing an A1c elevation.  Then, on the same day we had that endo visit, Sugar ended up needing to have a tooth pulled emergently.

It just wasn't a good day.

We went back to the endo 2 months later instead of 3, mainly for a weight check.  At that point, we had managed to drop her A1c from 7.5% to 7.3%, and she gained three pounds.  Aside from the fact that her annual labs showed that one of her thyroid antibodies had turned positive, it appeared that we were back on track, and heading in the right direction again.

And then there was November.  November...when I hit a wall.  November...when I was in the THICK of a rut.  November when I made gluten-free sugar cookies to bring with me to the endo, because I was willing to do anything to soften the blow that I knew that was coming.  November...when her A1c was back up to 7.5%, and though she hadn't lost weight, she hadn't gained any weight either.

Yeah.  THAT November.

A few days after THAT November endo appointment (um, 2 days to be exact.), I had an out of body experience, and spontaneously decided to switch Sugar from Novolog to Apidra (on Thanksgiving night nonetheless).  I say that, because no sound, well-rested, rational mother would EVER decide to start her daughter on a brand new insulin after a day of feasting, right before bedtime, just because.  A sane person wouldn't ever do such a thing.

Which may explain the mindset I was in, after weeks on end of nonsensical blood sugar mayhem.

(Just sayin'.)

After 24 hours, I noted that it did appear her blood sugars were staying in target range more often.  By the six week point, I was pretty certain that Apidra could be attributed to the improvement we were seeing in her numbers.

That being said, I have always maintained that the PROOF would be in the pudding...the A1c Pudding, that is.

We had her quarterly endo visit last Friday.

Seriously, we did.

The day before the appointment, she also had a dentist appointment....and the dentist gave us a high-five, awesome report card for her teeth.

Such a different experience than the day she needed to have a tooth pulled.

Whew!  Relief.

Oh yeah!

Back to the endo visit.

...

...

...

6.9%!

Looks like pudding will be on the menu for awhile.


More on our APIDRA experience...
The day we started.
The experience.
The trial end.
The 6 week review.
The verdict.

Update: The Apidra Experience.

Let's be up front here.

You're supposed to change out your insulin pump sites every 3 days.

Got it?

It's just that one of the biggest concerns I had about Apidra had been the number of times I ran across the complaint that it didn't seem to last well beyond the 48 hour mark in an insulin pump.  I'm just not interested in troubleshooting high blood sugars every other day, if I can avoid it.

Right now I'm just observing, that's all.

Here's the play by play of our initial experience with Apidra.  I checked in around the 24 hour mark, somewhere between 9 - 10 pm each evening...

(Keep in mind that LOW stretch at the beginning of Day 1 never really dropped below 78 by fingerprick. New Dex sensors take us about 6 hours before we begin to see consistently accurate readings.)

(Forgive the photo.  I was frazzled.)

If I had access to Xanax, I'm pretty sure I would have taken at least one on Day 2.

I hadn't made any adjustments to her pump settings.  She spent the majority of her time above 200, and I was feeling pretty down about it.  I wanted so badly to see this experiment work, but also wanted to see if Apidra was even going to last in her pump.  I didn't want to invest the brainpower into tweaking her pump settings if this insulin wasn't going to work out.  I was afraid that we'd have the same 48 Hour FAIL experience that I had read about.

It took everything I had not to yank her site, and throw this idea out the window.  Keep in mind that, by now, seeing blood sugars over 250 had become commonplace for over 2 weeks.  I was feeling really bummed, and feared we'd never get out of this rut, but decided to see if things settled down after she fell asleep, and we could eliminate food from the picture.

When I saw that her numbers did, indeed, come back into range overnight, I went ahead and made some adjustments to her morning basal settings in anticipation of the infamous breakfast spike.

Apparently it worked.  The proof is in the pudding, my friends.  In this case, the last of a pumpkin cobbler and a bowl of strawberries.  I realize that's not the most nutritious breakfast, but I was all about pushing Apidra's limits while she was under my watchful eye, before returning to school after the long weekend.

Even without making afternoon adjustments, she still only made it to 250 once, and the lowest BG we saw was 78.  In fact, 78 by fingerprick has consistently been the lowest BG we've seen since this experiment started.  Day 3 was full of carbs...from pumpkin cobbler to pretzels to a hot fudge sundae, fruit, yogurt covered raisins, and hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I wanted to see this stuff work under pressure.

I just sent Sugar to school on her 4th day of Apidra in the same site we started with........ummmm.......more than three days ago.

Every.  Three.  Days.  People.

Don't go telling your endo that you read some sleep deprived mother's blog who let her kid's site go indefinitely.

I'm not creating a science experiment, trying to see if I can fester an infected site in her bum.

Promise.

I'm simply gathering data.  Changing the site changes a very relevant variable, and I want to see how things are going with as many stable variables as possible.

Well, except for food.  As far as food goes, I was practically throwing it at her to see how well Apidra could handle it.

I sent her back to school with a graph that looks like this...

I'm giving this experiment 1 more day.

Then I'm pretty sure I'll be requesting a prescription change.

(And now's a great time, because we qualify for FREE Apidra until April 2012.  I like FREE.)


More on our APIDRA experience...
The day we started.
The experience.
The trial end.
The 6 week review.
The verdict.