Hey my baby! You are officially eight weeks old today! I'd love to say time is just flying by, but honestly...it's not! I just want to meet you so bad that it makes time tick tock by! I've got some good news to share for me and you, but first...here's a little bit about you, now that you are eight weeks.
New this week: Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your hands and feet, your eyelids practically cover your eyes now, breathing tubes extend from your throat to the branches of your developing lungs, and your "tail" is just about gone (whew!). In your brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. Everyone around me may be telling me that they think you are a boy or a girl, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're a boy or a girl yet. Either way, you, my little baby — about the size of a large raspberry — are constantly moving and shifting, though I still can't feel it (darn it!).
So, my little raspberry...you have been promoted up the fruit ladder from blueberry to raspberry! =) And I can't wait until Thursday morning, because your Daddy and I get to see you again! Can't wait to post those pictures on here!
Now for the good news! I think I have told you about getting a new insulin pump that has the continuous blood glucose monitor (CGM) built into it. This will allow me to be even more on top of taking care of you with knowing where my blood sugars are every 5-15 minutes (and so I don't go super low like I did tonight - 35 - yikes! Sorry Mom, you probably didn't want to know that!) We were just unsure about insurance coverage. Well, the nice people from Medtronic (who really have done an amazing job with all of this) called tonight and said that we are covered like we were hoping, at 80% for both the pump (we already knew we were covered here) and the CGM piece built into the pump (which has a separate transmitter piece and sensors that I will have to arrange on my body somewhere around where my pump site goes in - my skin real estate is getting pricey!). Anyway...all that to say...good news! We will be able to have the CGM piece of all of this, which is AMAZING!!!! It will be a bit of a learning curve for me, as I've only dealt with the pump before...but I'm a quick learner, so I'm not scared! The huge benefits of the CGM will be that I will be able to catch a rising or lowering blood sugar on the way up or down. With being able to see this trend and the inevitable coming and especially since I will know I still have insulin working in me (which will still be sending my sugar level lower) and my blood sugar is, say, 70, I can catch it before it becomes a 35 - like tonight - where I start freaking out a little on top of the already sweaty and jittery feelings I get from being low. And, from what I understand, the CGM now has the capability to talk to my pump (first of it's kind I think), so if I am too high - like a 200 number - it will alert me that it wants to give me a bolus (fancy word for an "amount") of insulin to bring me back into range (considering all the insulin I would still have working in me from previous boluses, of course). Then, I okay it and WA-LAH! It does it. Not quite a closed-loop system...but I'd say it's closer than ever before....and I am sure excited that you and I get to take part in this cool new stuff! We'll just call it a poor-man's pancreas (better than the worthless piece of junk I have!)...and that's only because all this technology is defnitely not easy on the wallet! =)
And wow, how could I forget the other piece of GREAT news tonight? Well...there is a test called a 24-hour urine test (and yes, it's EXACTLY as it sounds - collect all your urine in a 24-hour period - not a pretty picture at all, right?)...and to officially take this test, I had to drag my "jug-o-urine" into the lab/doc's office yesterday morning - what a fun event. Not only did I have a gallon jug of my pee in the front seat of my car (and as I was driving my jug-o-pee to the office, I was literally wondering how many other drivers on the road with me had their pee sitting in the passenger seat with them?) but then I also got to carry it in a grocery store bag into the lab/waiting room area (yes, you people in the waiting room now staring at me, I am carrying almost a gallon of my pee in my hands right now - now get back to your magazine). Anyway, all these minor annoyances and one blood test later - I get a call with the test results (which measures kidney function - which is something I am always fearful of losing, being diabetic for 23 years) - and I have great, normal-functioning kidneys! Woohoo!
Tomorrow is an easier day for us (the past two days have been BUSY!!!!)...so I'm going to concentrate on taking it easy for you and just get in some rest time. Sound good? Good!
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