I don’t really remember the exact date of that night, but I remember the event, I remember the smells, the hot sticky night and I remember the emotion. It was another night in the 2 D-Kid house, a few months into this tide of change and it was time to check BG’s before the girls went to bed. This night would introduce us to another facet of the D-life, BG’s heading in radically different direction.

The new routine was still taking form, but one thing was cemented right from the start, BG checks before bed, we had done it for 2 years with our older daughter. My wife handed me one meter and I beckoned for the my older D-kid. I check her BG and BAM, low BG. Darn I thought, that is kind of low, checked Dexcom CGM, aka Dexi, to see the trend arrow, crap, single arrow down. “What”, I said out loud, my mind went to dinner and what we did after, it was a laid back evening, no extra activity. My wife interrupted my thoughts and said “she was swimming that afternoon, she always tanks later in the day when she swims”. Once again the word crap came to mind.

Once again, I was interrupted by my wife when the BG results came up for new D-Kid, high, and arrow heading straight up. Now the details of that night I can’t remember all that vivid, the whole summer melted together in a flow of diabetes related trials, learning and adjustments. The thing I do remember was the laugh of disillusionment we both had. This was going to be a relaxing Friday night after the kids were in bed. That was not to be. I fixed the low for our older (CWD) daughter with a few glucose tablets and waited to recheck. Now my attention turned to the younger d-kid with the high. I looked at my wife still pondering what to do. I don’t really remember the whole conversation but we both realized she would be high for a long time. Correction dose time, that would mean a couple of check through the night since the insulin would be active for 4 hours, so that meant it could over correct and drive her low.

I don’t remember the outcome in detail, but I do remember the low was fixed and the high came down without a crash. The thing I do remember was another Friday night with my wife that was not relaxing, not fun, and was us talking about diabetes, nodding off and getting woke up by the alarm clock on our phones. That followed by a day of crabbiness, cranky kids, hot weather, more swimming and another fragmented weekend we could not really enjoy. Some of my friends wonder why I give them the look like I want to rip their spine out when they tell me the detail of their “fun weekend”. Sorry, I get cranky on a lack of sleep, my wife gets less than me, she fights through it, we both do. We have to, our kids health rely on us, Juvenile Diabetes is a 24/7 job for a parent.