Catching up

I have thought many times that I would try to blog everyday, every-other-day or at least on a regular basis; but I just don't have anything that interesting or thought provoking to blog about! But just when I think my life is pretty boring, at least to someone on the outside-looking-in, we have some interesting things happen. Not that any of this is interesting to anyone outside, but it is something to blog about!

We have a small town political storm brewing here in Klamath county. Whether or not to merge the 2 school districts. It pretty much has created "them vs. us" and Lucas was joining the 'Vote No on the merger" rally for a walk down Main St to gather at the Court House. I think he was just going to hang out down town! My assumption was proven correct when he phoned and said it was pretty boring, they were going to hang out downtown for a while.

My little protester.

Morgan is almost finished with basketball. So far, the freshman team is 17-1, 10-1 in league play and we have 1 game left. I asked Morgan if he ready for basketball to be over and he looked at me like I had 2 heads....'I love basketball mom, why would I want it to be over?'....uh, because I am ready for Spring? Blood sugars have been tough. What works this week, won't work the next and I really need to check his over night basal rates. Checking his rates during basketball is really futile because there is so much change. Game night is different from practice nights and we just try to temporarily adjust as we can. A few nights over the past week or so he has woke up with some high blood sugars...250+, which, to me means that he has had a rebound from a low blood sugar. Asking Morgan if he had a low during the night gets me no information. He just say's 'No', I don't think he wakes up from his lows, he just sleeps through them. Well, when I went in to check him the other morning I found this....

It confirmed that at least he had a low that night. He chewed up the top to a tube of glucose tablets thinking it was a glucose tablet, we are fortunate that he didn't choke on the thing while trying to treat his low blood sugar! He has his final game on Tuesday. I think I will start testing his rates next week. When I test Morgan's basal rates, I will typically check his blood sugars every couple of hours over night. This will tell me if he is getting too much insulin...low blood sugars, or too little...high blood sugars. I can then adjust his insulin pump accordingly.

We seem to have also found the magic bullet if you will regarding his high blood sugars during games. Adrenaline always causes Morgan to spike during games and he has been very wary to start a game with too much active insulin flowing through his system. During a recent game he had about 5 units of active insulin at the beginning of the game and he never went above 150. AND he played great. So the key for Morgan is to have a few units of active insulin at the start of the game and monitor alot during. Better late than never!

Pat is sick again with a nasty virus settling in his chest. Please pray that he gets over this bug quickly!

By the way, I am voting against the merger

"Take Your Medicine Before Practice....

So it doesn't interrupt our practice."

Now why the hell didn't I think of that? I usually don't have to deal with stupid, stupid comments from ignorant people, but this comment is from someone who is going to be Morgan's basketball coach.

Basketball tryouts started this past Monday. Morgan came out of it with a glucose of over 400. Not good. He can't function well when over 250 and it showed. When I got there to pick him up he was uncoordinated, breathing hard and just didn't look well. I spoke with the head coach, who has known Morgan since 1st grade and is completely on board with Morgan's diabetes. He wants Morgan safe and wants to know what he needs to do to keep him healthy. Basically, it came down to Morgan being uncomfortable taking care of his diabetes in this new 'high school' arena. He wants to participate 'just like everyone else', not be singled out for being different. His blood sugar had been 95, so he downed a ton of carbs and went back to work. With the adrenaline and carbs, he sky-rocketed to a very unhealthy number.

Pat and I decided that until EVERYONE (Morgan, Coaches, Parents) was comfortable dealing with diabetes, I would just attend tryouts this week and help Morgan manage his blood sugars. This way, he could focus on basketball, I could keep an eye on him for signs of hi's or low's, and he could gain the confidence to walk off the court to take his blood sugar and treat it as necessary. Tuesday and Wednesday were great, he stayed below 250, took insulin as needed and checked his blood sugar about every 45-60 minutes. No problem. Until last night.

Morgan had forgotten his ankle braces so I ran home and got them for him, so he was late getting on the court. A little into practice another coach (Coach B) told Morgan that Coach M wanted to talk to him....in the stairwell. I figured he was being scolded for being late and didn't think anything of it. But over the course of tryouts, I had to call Morgan off the court to have him check his blood sugar. He was 135, too low for comfort, but he ate a little and had some Gatorade, they were just going to be shooting and not running. Well, he did end up running and he would not come off the court when I tried to get his attention. When I did, he was 106, shaking and pretty emotional. I could not figure out why he was so upset. I told him that I was there, I wasn't going to let anything happen, he was okay, just sit out and lets get his blood sugar up. That's when he told me about the stairwell....

Apparently, Coach M told Morgan in the stairwell that he "needs to take his medicine before practice so it doesn't interrupt"! I could have committed homicide or at the very least ripped the skin from that man's back. I spoke with the head coach, told him what was said. He was furious. He said that there is no room for that kind of prejudice and ignorance on his staff and he would take care of it.

This man has no idea of what he has done. Morgan was just starting to feel like he could take care of himself without having to worry about what the coaches would think. Unfortunately, ignorant people say stupid things and have no clue what it is like to deal with this 24/7. I wish we could just deal with it for an hour in the morning and forget about it until tomorrow. Life would definitely be much easier. I don't know what is going to happen. I think an apology to Morgan is in order. AND a very lengthy coarse in diabetes education.

And so it begins

For the last week or so we have had a wonderful break.  Morgan has not had Cross Country and therefore I have not had to worry too much about his blood sugars.  I did take this week to really hunker down and make adjustments and take more care in his carb counts, i.e. weighing his breakfast, writing carb counts on his lunches.  And the results?  Amazing numbers, at least for this week.  He started open gym for basketball last night, which means a lower basal rate over night, which typically relates to a higher wake up number....until I get it figured out again.  But not before basketball officially starts next Monday.

On a lighter note....this is what I woke up to this morning.  I guess it is time to break out the snow tires. 

Round 2

I have been layed out again with another rotten cold only this time had laryngitis for about 7 days and couldn't get any work done.  I am feeling better and finally caught up so I can do some blog posting!

Dealing with Morgan's diabetes and basketball has always been a 'trial-by-fire' thing.  We do what we know how to do, (control carbs, give insulin and pray) and hope that everything works out okay.  During the previous 3 tournaments we would watch his blood sugars sky-rocket into the 300 and 400's.  This was primarily due to being early morning games, 8AM and having eaten breakfast less than an hour before.  Adrenaline also causes his blood sugars to climb.  So the combination of the 2 was a sure fire way to end up playing basketball with high blood sugars.

At this last tournament, I asked Morgan if he could try to keep his morning carb intake to 50 grams.  You would have thought I asked him to chew off his left hand!  I tried to explain to him my reasoning and he agreed to give it a try.  so he limited his breakfast to fruit, potato's, and protein.

About 20 minutes before the start of his game, one of the other moms tell me that Morgan blood sugar is low!  WHAT?!?!?  When I ask him he was 59!  Go figure!  We finally got him up to a safe level, 130's I think, but he didn't start.  I told him that he was good to go, but he was still very wary.  

When he did go in, his mind was just not on the game.  He had passes hit him square in the chest that he missed, not 1 but 3.  It wasn't until halftime and his glucose over 200 that he finally became comfortable enough to play the game. 

Just when I think we have it all figured out, Diabetes shows me that it can still kick me in the pants!

Last Travel Tournament

We made one last trip to the valley for Morgan's basketball tournament.  We have been to Eugene and Corvallis 4 times in the past 5 weeks and we are all ready to be home for a while.  While all of the tournaments have allowed our team to play other great teams, this tournament was by far the most difficult for them.  

The team had made a name for themselves, and everyone was gunning for our guys.  Other teams knew who they needed to shut down, the 3 big guys down low and our coach had to work other offenses into the game in order to get points on the board. 

 Our first game against Corvallis was a nail biter, they wanted to beat us and they worked hard to do so.  But in the end, we came up with the win.  (It didn't help that that game started at 8pm)

In the end, our boys came out on top and won the tournament by playing some great teams and awesome basketball.  We are some mighty proud parents.  We still have 2 weeks of basketball left (7 games).  

It will be bitter sweet when this season is over, as this is the last year that they will all play together on 1 team.  They are currently 31-2.  Next year, in high school, they will, most likely be split up onto the Varsity, JV and Freshman teams.

I have a story about Morgan and his blood sugars, but will post it later.

Funny Thing

Morgan had a basketball tournament last weekend in Eugene.  There were probably 20-30 teams, made up of 6-8th grade boys and girls.  I was sitting in the Springfield High School gym waiting for the last game to start when this lady came up to me:

Her:  "Your last name wouldn't happen to be 'Crebbin' would it?"

Me:  "That all depends...."

Her:  "Well my dad is up from Klamath Falls to watch my son play and he saw a boy walk by and said "That is one of those Crebbin twin's kids, go find out which one."  I saw you give him money so I suspected you were his mom."

Me:  "Yes he is mine  and yes he is the spitting image of his dad at that age."

This happened not once, but twice that day.  Someone recognized Pat from Jr High when they saw Morgan.

For those of you family members wondering....it was Cinda H.  who came up to me.  She was amazed at how much Morgan looked like Pat.  I can't remember the name of the man from Jr High.

It was a fun tournament and the boys finished first.  The team is now 25-2. 

Travel Advisory

Morgan had a basketball tournament in Corvallis this weekend so we left on Friday to make the 4 hour trip.  It had been snowing here when we left and we knew that it would take a little longer to get there.  The roads were fine once we got out of town and onto the highway and actually made it in about 5 hours.

Diamond Peak 

The tournament was a really fun one.  The boys get to play some really good teams and we can see improvement all the time.

They had an early morning game Sunday, 8:30, so Morgan had to be up and have breakfast about an hour before the game so it was really no surprise that his blood sugar was 400+ right before the game.  I am sure he was spiking from his breakfast AND he probably under bolused because he was going to be playing basketball soon, but 400+ is pretty high so he gave himself a few units of insulin just in case.

He didn't play much the first half because when he is that high it effects his game so when he checked at half-time imagine his surprise when his meter responded "HI".  Not "HI" as in hello, but HI as in "I can't tell what your blood sugar is, HIGH".  He lifts up his shirt and his infusion set is barely hanging on...Well we gave him boluses by syringe and got him down to reasonable levels soon enough.

The real excitement of the weekend also came on Sunday when we woke up to snow in Corvallis!  It snowed most of the morning and there was about 4 inches in places.  When it was time to leave for home our dilemma was not whether we should stay in town or not, but which road to take....we were sure highway 58 and 97 would be a mess(if it was snowing that hard in the valley, imagine what it was doing up there!), and at least along I-5 there were places to stay if we needed to.  So I-5 it was.  

Beautiful snow cover and cloud cover.

What were we thinking?

There is a downed tree right in the middle of the bend.

Trucks chaining up.  I don't even know what mountain passes we were on.  I couldn't find any signs...they were all buried.

The roads were terrible.  You have heard those traffic advisories that tell you to stay home and off the road unless in emergency situations....well we should have stayed home...or in a hotel somewhere.

This is I-5, we are headed south an the other side is headed North.  They were backed-up for about 5 miles while crews checked for chains, which were required headed north.  We were pulled over at 7-Feathers casino and the highway was closed due to downed power lines.  We were out for about 45 minutes before they started letting traffic back through.  

Total, it took us 9 hours to get home.  I know that one day, when he is older, Morgan will appreciate what his dad and I have gone through to get him to these basketball tournaments!

(Disclaimer:  The driver of the vehicle wasn't snapping photos...the passenger was!)