Pancreas on the run.

One of the only jobs I've never had at camp is nurse, mainly because I'm not the nurse type. This week, Honey and I added pancreas to our camp job resume.

I called our CDE last week and she gave me some tips.

1) Less Lantus, our long acting insulin. Before we left for camp Brooke had been running high but Dreama wouldn't let us increase her insulin. In fact she told us to decrease her Lantus the first night we were there and advised to decrease it again if she started going low. Before we left she was taking 4 units per day, at camp she was down to 2 per day for most of the week.

2) More snacks. Dreama told us to make sure her afternoon snack was a hefty one. We doubled her carbs from 5g to 10g and made sure she had plenty of protein and fat with it. We also made sure she got plenty of protein and fat with her bedtime snack and meals.

Brooke still had a few lows, but over all, her week was good. Thank goodness, we didn't have to use the glucagon. I'm glad we got some experience dealing with T1D on the go this week. It's going to help a ton as we plan for our vacation in November.

I was definitely ready to get home and back to our normal routine of testing, injections, organization, and storage.

We only had one sharps incident while we were gone. We kept all of our sharps in an old water bottle (reuse, reduce, recycle anyone?)

Since we aren't using syringes anymore, the waste takes up much less space. These are all of our sharps for the whole entire week. That's not too bad. One lone lancet made it's way to Honey's bed and we didn't find it until he sat on it. (oops!)

I forgot to pack an extra meter and batteries, but our meter didn't let us down. It worked perfectly all week.

The workhorse for the week was our teacup meter bag I bought from Too Sweet Boutique. Amy, the owner, is taking some time off from her boutique, but you need to check out her precious T1D supply bags when she's back in business.


I LOVE THIS BAG. It is the perfect size for everything we need to treat a low or to treat Brooke at meal time. I usually carry 2 juice boxes, a few rolls of smarties, a tube of cake icing, a couple of dollar bills left over from baseball/softball season for emergency sugar, an opened package of peanut butter crackers, and a card with my cell number and instructions on how to help Brooke treat her low.

While we were at camp, away from our normal organization system, it was easy to throw in an insulin pen and her thyroid pills at meal time, and head to the dinning hall.

Brooke took her bag to Bible class, and I carried it most everywhere else. It was handy to have the meter and juice right there and avoid a fast hike up the mountain to our cabin when she went low. Because it's such a unique bag, everyone knew it was Brooke's and that it had important stuff in it, so everyone was able to help us keep up with it.

The hardest part about keeping up with all the D stuff was going back and forth for each meal to get the insulin from the fridge in our cabin. Even though we were in the mountiains and it was much cooler, the only way to guarantee the insulin stayed the right temperature was to keep it in the fridge.

When we make our trip in November, I'm definitely going to have to figure out how we want to carry the insulin all day and still keep it in its happy place.

That's what it's all about right? Keeping the insulin in its happy place.