Friday, September 19, 2014

Taking Type 1 on Vacation... Wish we could leave it home!

It has been far too long since my last post. We have had so many changes over the past few months. Our oldest daughter Macy graduated from high school and is currently attending the NYS University of Albany... She is majoring in political science and is loving every minute of the college experience! Kalee,16, is now beginning her Junior year of high school. She is starting to show signs of, "school itus"... You know that chronic need to be finished with the drama of high school. Unfortunately, this usually does not hit until closer to Senior year so.... She has quite some time left to go. :(. As for , Michael, age 13 now... He is plugging away at his last year of Middle  School. He reminds me every day that he would much rather stay home and play.. (play referring to his iPod and electronic gadgets)  than attend school.... Academics do not seem to be the top of his priority list these days. Kalee and Michael had a pretty uneventful summer when it came to their blood sugars right up until our first full day of vacation in Florida... Typical right? We took our annual 22 hour drive to sunny Florida in August to visit with some family and spend a week in Disney with our adorable friend Mickey Mouse!  Our first evening after a lovely dinner we headed back to our resort to get some sleep before heading to the Magic Kingdom the next morning. At about 9 p.m Kalee mentioned that her stomach was not feeling well. Her blood sugar read in the lower 60's so I gave her some crackers and juice.... Yikes! Big mistake... It took all of two minutes for the juice and crackers to come right back up thus beginning the viscous cycle of every half an hour vomiting throughout the night. Now a stomach virus to the non diabetics of the world is bad enough but having type 1 with this virus puts a whole new spin on it. We struggled to keep Kalee's blood sugars up because she could not keep anything down. Finally having to give her a micro dosage of glucagon to raise her glucose level to a safe number. Then, as many of you know.... Here come the ketones. As much as Kalee tried to drink water to flush those nasty ketones out of her system, it was close to impossible to keep the water down for more than five minutes. By 8 a.m the next morning my concern turned to worry. I contacted Kalee's physician here in NY who felt that if we could not get the vomiting to stop and fluids into her we would need to take her to Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando. My heart sank. Just what this poor girl wanted right... to spend her vacation visiting Arnold instead of Mickey :(. Not to mention the thought of bringing my daughter to an out of state hospital with doctors that we did not know terrified me. I began trying small drops of water on Kalee's tongue.... She finally started dozing off after a full night of vomiting and I would wake her each hour to give her sips of water through a straw. Thankfully by late afternoon.... Kalee's fever had broken, she was keeping fluids down and her ketones had decreased to a trace. By the next day we were in the parks doing what families are supposed to be doing in Walt Disney World.... Having a Magical Time! Our vacation which started out on not such a magical note turned into one of our very best Disney experiences!  Type 1 sure does trip us up from time to time but we try our very best to not let it knock us down!