Emergency Room Visit

We often hear stories of other diabetics going to the emergency room or even being admitted because they have large ketones and just can't get their blood sugar down. If I'm honest with myself I think I secretly judged those people."Aren't they managing their diabetes?" "Don't they check their blood sugars?" I know. I know. I am a diabetes snob. Didn't think I was but I am-or at least used to be.
When the endocrinologist asks Kelsey if she'd had any emergency room visits or admissions we always answer with a resounding 'NO."It's something we are both proud of. I'm not saying she doesn't get ketones, but we have always known how to trouble shoot. We have been successful changing her site,or calling the pump company to trouble shoot, or maybe changing her pump basal rates.
Well last weekend, Kelsey kept waking up with high blood sugars and large ketones. She would get them down in the day but each night the same thing would happen. After a couple days of this it was wearing on her body and eventually the ketones were sticking around all through the day.
We called the endocrinologist on call and after explaining the situation he came to the conclusion it was a pump malfunction.
We called the pump company and they said the pump was fine and instructed us to call the endocrinologist.So now what?
After talking to other my Type 3 friend Eileen,she suggested I insist on a new pump. That way we could rule it out.Animas overnighted it to us. Kelsey set it up with all of her newly adjusted basal rates and the same thing happened the next morning. She woke up with a blood sugar of 324 and small ketones. Her ketones became large within a few hours of waking.
After 2 1/2 days of troubleshooting and still no results, I knew she had to go to the emergency room. I called the endocrinologist and he agreed. This way they could check her electrolites and make sure she as not dehydrated.
I felt like I had really let Kelsey down. I was scared to see how gray her skin color was and how ill she looked. Her poor body was just shutting down.
We headed to the children's hospital's emergency room. They took us back immediately and gave Kelsey an IV. They also took a urine test and asked Kelsey many questions.
After just 30 minutes of getting fluids,Kelsey's color and personality were back to normal. In fact, she felt so good she was taking pictures of herself in her hospital gown and iv and posting it on Facebook for all of her friends to comment on.
After about 2 hours they came back with all the lab results. She was not in DKA and her urine glucose levels were normal. Her urine did show signs of infection though. Once a UTI was ruled out they decided it was this virus that was going around and it was wreaking havoc on her diabetes.A day or two before this whole thing happened, Kelsey did mention she wasn't feeling well, but since it was so short-lived and there wasn't any vomiting-we didn't think it was a virus.
Now that we know what happened, hopefully we can prevent this from ever happening again. But I know that's not a sure thing. Sometimes you can do everything you are supposed to and this disease will still do what it wants. It has a mind of it's own sometimes.Life with diabetes is certainly a learning experience.