infection cannula site continuous blood glucose monitoring

[jimlauren]

my 2 year old daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes five months ago. our consultant has changed her plan of care four times she was on five injections a day and her readings were still all over the place. she was given a continuous blood glucose meter for four dayss, the canulla site got infected (staph aureus).  when the results came back the diabetes team decided our home blood glucose meter wasn't working and we were given a new one (the results weren't matching a lot of the time, eg our home monitor was reading 2.9 the continuous monitor was reading 7.1). i was wondering if the pus at the canulla site would have affected the results from the continuous monitor and if it really was our home monitor that was wrong and not the continuous monitor? since the results her insulin carb ratio has been changed as has her levemir dose and i feel we have to start again from scratch. please help!

[JDRF-Team-gg]

Hi jimlauren!  First of all, I want to share with you that my own daughter was diagnosed at 21 months, so I can truly relate to what you are going through.  That was 17 years ago and my daughter is a healthy & happy 19 year old who is now in college...just wanted you to know that as you are newly diagnosed.  Secondly, I am not a medical professional, so any information that you obtain on this site should be verified with your daughter's healthcare team.  

Sounds like a real nightmare with the continuous bg meter and the infection your daughter got.  That's horrible for both her and you.  With my daughter, any time she got an infection and needed to be on antibiotics, her bg's would be elevated.  That may have added to her high bg's.  Especially with the little ones, because their activity level changes from day to day, their dosages are pretty hard to figure out even when they're not dealing with infection.  I know nothing about continuous blood glucose meters, but it makes sense to me that if something were blocking the site, it could affect the readings.  Do you have more than one bg monitor?  If you do and as long as they are both calibrated, check the results against each other and see what you find.  That way, you can find out and rest easy that the monitor is accurate.

Sounds like you are in close contact with your daughter's endocrinologist and that is a very good thing, especially being newly diagnosed.  I know that relying on others for your own child's well-being is humbling for a parent, but keeping close tabs on her bg's is very important in her being in good control.  That is the key to avoiding long-term complications.  As you learn to deal with and adjust to living with diabetes, your confidence will grow and your reliance on your healthcare team will not seem to intrusive to your family's lifestyle.

Have you heard of the honeymoon phase?  That is the time period after diagnosis where the pancreas may be producing some insulin sporadically and can play into bg results that are erratic and unexplainable.  There is no way to tell how long this could be going on, but it needs to be considered in a newly diagnosed child.  

There will be many times during your daughter's toddler years that things will seem to be like starting all over again, but with each new phase and experience, you will be facing it with that much more knowledge and skill needed to deal effectively and confident that you can do it.  Have you checked out the jdrf website at www.jdrf.org?  There's a newly diagnosed column on the left that can lead you to the online diabetes support team.  There you can post any question/comment and you will be matched up to someone who has had life experience with exactly your situation.  I am a member of that team and if you want to communicate with me directly, all you have to do is request me (gg).  We have a lot in common, so I would like to be able to help you out further if you need anything or just want to talk.  I hope I have answered your questions & good luck with your baby girl!

[jimlauren]

thankyou for your reply and helping us with our question it is reassuring to be able to speak to someone who has encountered these problems first hand as a parent. we don't now any other families with a d child as young as ours.  we spend a lot of time on the internet looking for answers and info but we are sometimes unable to find exactly what we are looking for, i feel we have found real help here. we look forward to sharing more experiences here and hope we can help others too.

[JDRF Team SGG]

I believe that our Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Online Diabetes Support Team may be just the help you are seeking. If you go to the Juvenile DIabetes Research Foundation's website (www.jdrf.org) and click on the Online Diabetes Support Team link, you will be taken to a window where you can type in your question and submit it. This will send your request to a moderator who will match your situation up with one of about 80+ volunteers so you can communicate more personally, one on one, than you can in a public forum such as this. I would recommend that you write exactly what you have written here, and ask also to be contacted by the nearest local chapter of JDRF. The person who will be assigned to contact you via e-mail will then arrange to have the local chapter contact you, which is a great way to meet other parents of young type 1 children. The person who will be assigned to contact you via e-mail will be carefully matched to your situation, and you can e-mail back and forth to ask questions and to get support from another parent with more experience than you have with this disease thus far. The volunteers who work for the Online Diabetes Support Team have been carefully screened and have proven themselves to be well-educated about the disease and its treatments. So this kind of one-on-one communication is a wonderful resource that is available for you.