Endocrinology Check Up

Every 3(ish) months we meet with our endocrinologist to check our a1c and make sure all our basal rates & carb:insulin ratios are appropriate and still working for us. We check her pump & Dexcom information and look for patterns of highs & lows and talk about how we might be able to fix/change the patterns.

Elsie has an unbelievable group of doctors & nurses (Noreen, Kelly, & Dr Fadia) we are so happy with our team - Elsie always makes them laugh and tells some pretty awesome stories to them!!

We played and talked and Elsie was a VERY big girl today - she did her own poke for her a1c and blood sugar check! (yay!)

We got her a1c results back and it was 7.1% - last time it was 7.7%!! We've never had this low of an a1c!! This is HUGE fyi - this is NOT easy to obtain with a toddler & we are so incredibly happy to have been able to do this! Sarah was worried & expecting a higher a1c than before because of the new baby and not yet being in a great pattern of things after transitioning to two babies - but the results show that she's obviously got this schedule of two-a-dem down even more than she expected!! Elsie is thriving, growing and gaining weight!!

There is no way we could be been able to accomplish this without our technology - our Dexcom & our T:slim pump - as well as our amazing support team (you know who you are 😉) Our Dexcom has been able to keep up from getting any dangerous lows - IN FACT only 1% (woot woot) of our blood sugars were below 70!! Here is a picture from our Dexcom studio information the green section is our target area of 80-200 and the yellow is the high area and the red is low. We want to keep MOST of our numbers in the green area; which as you can see we are able to do fairly well!!

Back in November of last year we met our Endocrinologist for the first time - we had a 7.9% a1c and she mentioned that she'd like it to be under 7.5% - our jaws hit the floor. We were shocked that she would expect us to get Elsie that low at 3 years old - even our CDE was surprised and we agreed that under 8% would be appropriate for her and we were comfortable with that - Never in a million years would we have expected to get her down under 7.5% at this age - and we have blown our doctor and CDE away -

We've posted this before we know but the a1c chart is helpful knowing where her sugars are and all that. Now someone without diabetes would have an a1c between 4.5% & 6%. So someone with an a1c of 7.1% would have an average blood sugar of around 155(ish) and Elsie's target blood sugar at this point is 150 so we are doing exactly what we are expected!!

Elsie is doing dance class and staying active she is NOT letting diabetes stop her at all!! our JDRF walk is Sunday afternoon & we have raised a total of $2,241.67. We never thought that we'd double our goal of $1,000. We are absolutely floored by the outpouring of support!! Thank you Thank you Thank you to everyone who has donated & we'll add a link to our walk page for those who may feel the desire to get us to the $2500 mark - that is our next milestone & there is 3 days left before the walk & we are ready to MOOOVE!!! (see what we did there?!?! haha) http://www2.jdrf.org/goto/TeamElsie

Take care everyone & here are some pictures of the girls playing around at the Endo appointment!!

We celebrated at South Bend Chocolate Company

Love you all!!
McKenzie, Sarah, Elsie, & Veda

Allergy Testing

Rough & bumpy skin is nothing new to Elsie dear. We have had issues with it for almost her whole life - We've done lotions, hydrocortisone creams, using moisturizing body washes etc. Still unable to break the dry skin cycle. We started to seek help from our doctor when Elsie started to itch this skin open. She would wake up with scabs on her chest and belly. So we asked for a medical professional's help. We tried a slew of things and finally we were agreed on doing an allergy test. So we had a blood test done - the blood test showed small allergies to Milk, Eggs, Soy, and Sesame Seed. There were mild seasonal allergies that came up too -

We were a bit panicked however because we determined that out of all those allergens MILK seems to be in the BULK of her diet. She loves milk, cheese, yogurt etc... so we assumed that would have been the culprit. We were told to do 4 weeks dairy free and note any differences. We switched to almond milk right away and Elsie likes it so that was a win!! She also love cheese and that was difficult for her to understand what we were doing. Nothing in a 3 year olds mind understands an allergy trial - NOTHING

She always just rolls with everything and it is so amazing!! She even learned that if it was white it probably made her itchy and would refuse to eat some things.

Playing with MomMom

So we were referred to an allergist and we went to the appointment - she was given a few prick tests on her back - she HATED them - it seemed to hurt her pretty bad. She cried for the entire 15 minutes we had to wait for the test. We tried to make her laugh we tried it all but come to find out they do a test area that is all histamine which just makes you itch ( so they can compare her results to that one) and we didn't know that she was incredibly itchy and could itch because it was on her back. Poor thing!!

We played around and had some fun - we laughed when we changed Veda's diaper & she tore apart the entire paper on top of the exam table haha!!

Silly BeanBean

Found out that she wait for it... HAS NO FOOD ALLERGIES... the blood tests came back at such a small amount that it really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things - so we have doctors orders to resume regular diet. SO we bought ice cream on the way home to have for dessert after dinner!!! She hasn't had ice cream or any BIG dairy products for quite some time - SO exciting!!!

We are absolutely thrilled that we do not have to work out taking out food out of her diet!! We have enough going on with carb counting everything - now figuring out if food contains milk was  just not something we were looking forward to. Our hearts go out to all families with food allergies - SUCH hard work and we truly feel for you - It is so true that you never know how blessed you are until you've been in the other shoes - until you've experienced that it could be worse and could be more challenging.

Thankful for another day of health with Elsie and she keeps us on our toes every day!!

Thanks for keeping up with us

Take care & Much love
McKenzie, Sarah, Elsie & Veda