That time when the “Blood Sugar Gods” Spit in Our Face

That time when the “Blood Sugar Gods”

Spit in Our Face

Carlsbad/ Phoenix Trip (Part 2)

March 2016

Maddie 14

Kier 12

Cora 9

As always while on an airplane trip, we had been watching the weather forecast. We were well aware that the following day, the day we were planning to leave Carlsbad New Mexico and head to Phoenix Arizona, was expected to bring 50+ mile per hour winds. Yikes! Winds like that were likely to leave our little planes grounded for the day. This left us with a choice. Either forfeit the price of a night in our vacation rental and “get out of Dodge” while we could, or stay an extra, unexpected night (or two) – and pay for that. Either way we would be wasting some vacation dollars.

We have been stuck on a number of vacations, so when it comes to betting on the weather, “getting out while the getting' is good” tends to be our policy. Bret and Lance had joined us for this half of our vacation. The rest of their spring break plans were in the southeast, so they agreed with the leave early option.

That morning, the boys decided that before heading to the cavern we should stop by the airport to get the gas orders started. They were rather flabbergasted when the two linemen asked if they wanted aviation gas or jet fuel! Determining that anyone who did not know which fuel to put in a single engine aircraft should NOT be left alone with TWO different fuel trucks and two airplanes, we stayed long enough to see them pull out the correct fuel truck. Apparently we should have stayed to supervise a little longer because in the afternoon, when we returned, Bret found an oil slick in front of his plane and the plane its self splattered with oil. This was particularly awful because he and Lance had spent no less then 4 hours washing and waxing the plane just 2 days earlier!

On the bright side, the weather gods smiled on us for the night. Despite the fact that ridiculous winds were predicted for the following day, most of the flight to Phoenix was smooth. Much of it took place in the dark. It was a beautiful full moon night and the stars were shinning bright.

On the other hand, the diabetes gods were not so generous and, given the fact that we forgot to unhook her insulin pump, 45 minutes into the flight Cora's blood sugar was a disturbing 42. If the pump is not disconnected at take off and landing the air pressure changes at different altitudes cause an unmetered amount of insulin to be forced out of the tubing at inopportune times! Fortunately a juice box corrected the problem.

After arriving in Phoenix, we enjoyed the next three days in the heat of the Sonora Desert.

We viewed Petroglyphs, walked around the Audubon nature preserve, toured the “Mystery Castle”, visited the Science Museum, enjoyed the company of family and friends and took pictures in the rose garden, all while Colorado was buried under a surprise two feet of snow.

The bad news was that this snow storm had a sibling. AND The plane was expected to be tucked back into the hangar at Rocky Mountain Metro Airport by Sunday because it was reserved by another club member. We plotted and calculated how we would manage to slip in through the small window of time between the two storms. As it turned out the window was smaller than we anticipated and we didn't make it!

We left Phoenix early on Friday (a day earlier then originally planned)in order to beat the storm that was expected to hit Colorado late Friday night and last until Saturday night. The flight started out relatively benign, but things started getting rough as we rounded the mountains around Santa Fe. We had already anticipated lunch in Santa Fe and it was a welcome break after the last 30 minutes of bouncing.

We borrowed the courtesy car, left our pooches on the patio of the FBO under the supervision of the kind linemen, and went for lunch. At lunch I lobbied for spending the night in Santa Fe. After all, we had some friends that I knew would be in Santa Fe on vacation the next day, and it seemed like a good excuse to spend a day in artsy Santa Fe. Joel vetoed my vote, and I guess since he is the one with the means of transporting us home, his vote counted for more than mine.

Joel phoned the air traffic briefer who was not as pessimistic about the sky conditions as I was (of course he was sitting in an office not an airplane that day, so that might account for some of his optimism...)

From the word “Go”, the flight that afternoon was awful. We were bounced all over the sky-- up, down and side to side! I alternately grabbed the “O-S” handle and gripped the sides of my seat in turn. I counted off the minutes that slowly ticked by, waiting for enough time to have passed that I could reasonably claim I could take it no more. As it happened, I never had to “tap out” because circumstance caused Joel to decide on his own that we should divert and land in, you guessed it, Pueblo.

When you think about it there are really very few requirements for a good barf bag. They must be opaque, they must NOT break, and they must be easy to open. Cora's barf bag failed on one of the later two requirements causing a mess in the back of the plane. Allow me to point out some obvious differences between a car sickness incident and a airsickness incident: 1) in a car you can roll down the windows giving fresh air to all the passengers and clearing away the unpleasant smells, and whats more 2) you can usually immediately pull the car over and clean up the mess. Neither of these are true in an airplane!

I urged the kids to find something to contain the vomit (and especially the vomit smell!) Nothing could be found. In the end, and much to Kier's dismay, I insisted that they cover it with Kier's favorite sweatshirt.

After landing and cleaning up, we discovered that (a) Cora's coat had been left behind and now that her sweatshirt was, shall we say, unwearable, she was without any warm clothes as a snowstorm was approaching; and (b) that despite having just tossed her cookies Cora's blood sugar had somehow managed to climb into the 200s.

This was the moment when I epicly failed at the that blood sugar math test. I figured that, because of the vomited up carbs, the insulin we gave Cora at lunch would be enough to solve the high blood sugar problem. For the record, this assumption had absolutely no basis; it had been hours since her lunch insulin had been given. None-the-less, in a moment of fear induced stupidity, I chose not to give the insulin to correct the high blood sugar.

Before hopping back in the airplane to finish the flight, we did a quick look-see at the radar and found that the window before the storm had indeed snapped shut. We would not be making it home that night. We decided that, since we could see as far as Colorado Springs and it had an airport located closer to the town, we would continue an extra fifteen minutes north before calling it a day.

Once settled in the hotel in Colorado Springs I checked Cora's blood sugar again and my epic failure became truly evident; her blood sugar was now over 300. I pulled out the blood ketone meter and it read a disturbing 2.5. Ketones are a measure of the acidity of the blood due to metabolizing fat instead of glucose. A 2.5 is not a good number; in fact the little paper included with the tester advises that you call the doctor right away if the meter reader over 1.5. The doctor's office was closed. I gave the correction the pump advised and prayed for the best.

Thinking perhaps the test was somehow wrong, after all we had never seem it register anything above a 1 before, I felt compelled to test again. But the due to the $10 a test strip price (and knowing it was probably right)I decided to use the cheaper urine test strips. Almost instantly the little square turned to an ominous dark purple. I set a timer for an hour, made poor Cora drink glass after glass of water to flush out the ketones. Then I sat anxiously by the window watching the giant snow flakes sticking to the cars cars and grass outside.

Joel returned from his dinner finding foray with a pizza and salad. Cora wisely opted out of the pizza, instead settling for salad and peanut butter crackers. When the timer sounded I was surprised and beyond relieved to find that both Cora's blood sugar and ketones were back with in reasonable levels. They did continue to be a little wonky-- up and down-- all night, and I didn't get much sleep, but at least I was no longer wondering where the nearest emergency room was.

By morning, the snow had piled up almost six inches and was still coming down. We funned out the tiny hotel pool and check out time came, but still the weather held us hostage. We hemmed and hawed over what to do next, finally deciding to drive the rental car the remaining 60 miles home.

Sunday morning (Easter morning) Joel drove up to Colorado Springs and flew the plane home while the kids and I went to Easter Church Service. Oh and the person who had the airplane reservation for Sunday morning, they canceled