Monday 21 July 2014

Summer Day Camp

Today was the first day that both girls went to Summer Day Camp.  Although schools been out for several weeks now, we are only just starting a new routine.  First we took a short trip to Dartmouth for Canada Day, then Amy had strept throat, then both girls had the chicken pox.

As I was getting everything gathered up, my husband made an off-hand comment about when I dropped them off. I was completely caught off guard and not prepared to do the dropping off.   You see, I work about a 5 minute drive from our house.  Husband works about 15 minutes from house.  I know, we don't have long distances to go.....but the summer day camp is just down the road from him.  I didn't want to drive all the way up on base, then have to come all the way back down.  I ended up quickly throwing my things together and taking them, because he wanted me to be the one to talk to the camp girls.  In the end, not a big deal.

I had already talked to the organizer and gave some information about managing Amy's diabetes a few weeks before the camp started, but hadn't talked to the young girl in charge.  I told her if she needed anything to just call me.

Lunchtime the phone rang. She told me that Amy's site was falling off.  I remembered that last night before bath her IV 3000 dressing was coming after returning from the beach, so we removed it and planned to put on another.  Guess we didn't put on the other one.  I sent Corey up to change it after his lunch.

At 3pm I get another call, her sugar is 18 and it won't give a correction because of the amount of insulin already on board.  I asked her to put Amy on the phone and had her put on a temp basal.  I also gave her some reasons why her sugar may be high.....including taking it off for a water fight.

In all, the day was good, my only concern now is that Wednesday is a scheduled beach day....all day!

Sunday 13 July 2014

Wait. What?

Has it really been almost two months since I last posted?  Wow, I didn't realize it's been that long.

A lot has happened.  Rylie graduated Kindergarden. Amy finished grade two.  The both did amazing. I couldn't be prouder.  I really need to come up with a great scheme....I mean idea to keep them reading over the summer.

We just returned home from a trip to Nova Scotia.  It took us three days to drive there, a week at our friends then three days to drive home again.  The second day home was in the midst of Tropical Storm Arthur......with a brand new travel trailer in tow.  That was interesting!

My mom has always watched my girls for me, ever since I went back to work when Amy was a year old.  I know how lucky I was that she took on that role for us, especially when Amy was diagnosed in Kindergarden and doing half days.  My mom was there for the other part of the day, and that was comforting.  Well. Since Rylie will be in school all day this September as well, my mom made the difficult decision to return to work.  With this change, came my first year ever having to decide what to do with the girls during the day since school was out.

We signed them up for a summer day camp program on the Air Force base that my husband works. The first week of the camp we were out of town.  Last week was to be their first week and they couldn't have been more excited.....except, our first day home, Amy woke up not feeling very well.  I was home from work for one more day to unpack and settle the house away.  Amy slept most of the day.  Fever, headache, chills, sore throat.  The next day I was convinced she had strept throat, and would take her to the local ER when I got off work.  When my husband called to say she was throwing up and had 0.8 ketones. I asked him to meet me at the hospital (where I work).  He dropped her off to me, then went to bring Rylie to her Nanny's house.

First in the ER they took vitals, asked pertinent questions, then sent us back to the waiting room. I made it clear that she had diabetes, had thrown up and had a small amount of ketones.  And that she had been exposed to chicken pox while on our vacation that we just returned from. (Our friend's youngest daughter broke out in pox the day we arrived).  We waited almost an hour when I tested her again. Her sugar had risen to 12, and ketones were 1.9.  When the door opened to call the next person in for triage, I spoke to the nurse to let her know the new values.  They had us back inside in about 5-10 minutes.  The doctor came in shortly after.  She agreed that Amy appeared to have strept throat.  Also, because of the ketones and the vomiting she wanted to do some blood work and possibly give some fluids.  I tested her again while we waited and blood sugar was up to 13.9 and ketones 2.9.  I managed to convince Amy that she had to do both, and boy was she a trooper!  She had two blood draws (with three attempts) and she had an IV inserted (which didn't work the first time).  The funny thing is, the blood work came back ok.  She didn't have any metabolic disturbances even though our meter was reading the many ketones! I was happy she didn't but wondered about its reliability then.  After  6 hours at the ER we got to go home.

Our weekend started out uneventful. We decided to sleep in the new camper in the front yard.  When Rylie woke she had a few red bumps on her face. I pushed my nagging feeling aside.  By supper time I couldn't ignore those feels because the proof was in the pox.  Yup, that's right! CHICKEN POX!!!

14 days to the day of being exposed, Rylie broke out.  Now to be fair, we weren't just exposed that one time, we lived with a little girl who had them for a week.  The length of her entire illness.

To answer the next question, yes, they have both been vaccinated, Amy has had one and Rylie two.  They changed the vaccine schedule in 2011 because the one shot wasn't working well.  Now, I don't want to get into a vaccine debate, I 100% support vaccination.  I'm a pharmacist and see the benefits of vaccination daily.  And heard immunity only works when the heard is immunized.  The thing is, the severity is no where near what it was when I had them 15 years ago.

Here's the kicker....looks like Amy has broken out in a few initial spots as well. At least they have them at the same time, right?

What I'm wondering is, do any of you have any experience with diabetes and chicken pox?