THE SECRET TO TOTAL HEALTH IS . . .

I won't keep you waiting for the answer. It's REST!

I was standing in line at the grocery store, only half thinking when I saw that very headline on a magazine. It kept coming back to me over and over again for the next several days. I just could not quite reconcile this news. Worse yet, I could not remember what magazine it was on. This makes a big difference as to whether or not I have to accept this as truth. I pondered this for several "unrestful" nights. Then suddenly, in the mail, my free copy of Outside Magazine showed up. And there it was, right on top of this month's issue: The Secret to Total Health is . . . Rest? So now I had my source but I let it sit on the kitchen table for a week or so before reading it. This morning I bit the bullet and read the article. Much to my delight, the gist of the article is about working the appropriate amount of recovery time into your workout regimen. I am very, very lucky to work with a top-notch coach to whom I am eternally grateful. She knows all about stuff like recovery time - she builds it into my workout plans. I am spoiled rotten - I don't have to think about anything - I just follow the directions as she has detailed them on the calendar. This is the easiest part of my life. So do I get my total health pass? I think not . . .

I think there is more to this rest issue, and I'm not gettin' it. Yes, every third week I have a "recovery" week in my workouts and I drink my "recovery" shakes. But I have not gotten a good night's sleep in three years. I don't know if I have gotten this blog out to enough parents of diabetic children yet to be able to enlist your help on this, but if you are out there and reading this and you've got the answer to a good night's sleep - please, I beg of you -share!

I have had an ongoing battle with my daughter's endocrinologist (mostly the nurses) since she was diagnosed. They tell me that I HAVE to sleep through the night. There are a couple of things in the way of this happening. First and foremost is that lovely little book with pink panther on the cover - it's like the instruction manual you get when you leave the hospital with your newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic. One night I was in bed reading the book and I came upon a section that referred to "Dead in Bed Syndrome". This is an instance when the type 1 diabetic dies in his/her sleep. According to the book this is very, very rare. But I'm like, ummmm, we're already dealing with rare here - I mean what were the odds that my kid was going to have type 1 diabetes and celiac disease? Why should I believe that she's not going to be the rare one to "you-know-what" in bed? Ok - never sleeping again!! I mean really is there a parent of a new born infant anywhere that doesn't at some point stand over the crib listening for the sound of their baby's breath and worrying about SIDS?

My little (okay, huge) neurosis aside, what about high and low blood sugar in the night? This is where I need help from other parents. Even when we think we've got things under control, say 5 out of 7 nights a week we're all set, then there are the other 2 nights - one of which will be like last night. We check at 10 pm, blood sugar is off the charts high. We ponder what went wrong, maybe a bad carb count, who knows, we give insulin and go to bed. 12:30 am I check again to make sure the blood sugar has come down - uh oh, it hasn't, it's still sky high. Now I ponder - is there a problem with the pump? Maybe there was more fat in dinner than we thought and the carbs were delayed? Should we wake her up and go through the dreaded "protocol"? No, let's just try one more time, maybe it was just dinner, oh and she had been swimming earlier which meant being off the pump . . . oh but that's exercise that should bring her down - well let's just give more insulin and see what happens. Okay, back to bed, stare at the ceiling, worry that if I fall asleep I won't wake up again to check her and make a decision about what to do. Repeat over and over in my head "check at 2:00, check at 2:00" so that I'll be sure to wake up. Repeat this for an hour. Oops, dozed off for a half hour and now it's 2:00 am - so I go check my poor sleeping little pin cushion. Dang - still high! Now I sit on the edge of the bed, watching my precious child sleep and I ponder again - I hate leaving her high for extended periods of time. The health risks are terrible. I could wake her up and change the pump site but then I have to buy her a stuffed animal (that's the deal), but money is tight and she's got too many stuffed animals, I'm not thinking rationally, it's 2:00 in the morning for Lord's sake. What is going on? Is it the pump? The site? Is she getting sick? I know that I should now follow the "protocol" which calls for me to wake this child up (or just shove the needle in without waking her up, but I promised her I would never do that), give her insulin by syringe then replace her pump site (which is like another shot). She'll freak out - I'm tired. I don't know, I give her one more dose of insulin and decide to stare at the ceiling for another hour. I doze off and dream that we rechecked and her blood sugar is now 160 (great!). I wake up confused, was that real or did I dream it? It's now 3:30 am. I drag back in and check her again. Down a little but still very high. Now I have to ponder again . . . if it is down a bit that means that the site and the pump should be working so if I wake her up and replace them it could be for naught. Final decision time - She's been this way all night I might as well let her get her sleep and we'll deal with it in a few hours, when she wakes up. I get back in bed, it's 4 am, guess what . . . I can't sleep! I toss and turn until 5:30 and then I doze off for about an hour before I have to get up and get lunches made, back packs packed, well you know the drill.

I might as well round out the picture, for anyone that might happen upon this that does not have a diabetic child but wants to know in graphic detail what life is like for us. The other side of the coin is the fear of low blood sugar over night. This can be caused by too much insulin, not enough food or perhaps exercise that took place 6 hours earlier in the day. If blood sugar drops low enough a diabetic can experience seizures and become unconscious. We don't know exactly how low one has to go to hit that awful place - there is no set number. But in our minds we believe that anything below 40 is getting pretty dangerous. I'm told that the child will "probably" wake up feeling uncomfortable if they are having low blood sugar. But on many, many occasions we have gone in for our routine middle of the night check and found her sleeping along peacefully with blood sugar of 47! And this is like Russian Roulette - we have no idea what we're going to get on any given night. But really, I should be getting a full night's sleep - please tell me how?!

Maybe her total health depends on my (lack of) rest. My total health is going to depend on that Artificial Pancreas hitting the market. I'm told it's within reach, let's all just hope it is soon. In the meantime I'm going to grab another cup of coffee and head out for a swim.

Newsflash: As I was typing this the school nurse called to tell me that her blood sugar is now completely normal. So, it was a good guess last night, glad I didn't wake her up! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.