Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Thank God for Ruby


This post is part of a series called Where's Wuby? Wednesdays where I'll post a new story about Ruby, or diabetic alert dogs in general.  Ruby is a service dog trained to detect high and low blood sugars in Faith and notify me.  She has changed our lives and dramatically improved Faith's blood sugar control.  

If there was ever anything you wanted to know about these dogs, or how they work, ask away and I'll try to answer the best I can; or if you are just as amazed as me at how God created these animals, I hope you'll enjoy reading about the incredible experiences we've had so far with our Ruby.


In the meantime, you can follow Faith and Wuby on Facebook by clicking Here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






It's been a CRAZY week around here.  We've all been sick, Faith almost ended up in the hospital, Eli bit THROUGH his bottom lip...Yeah...  So, I'm cheating and reposting a Ruby story from November of last year. Thank God for Ruby.


So, Sunday while we were at Green Acres, Ruby kept alerting that Faith was high.  She was staying in or around the 300's.  It was another one of those stubborn highs that just won't come down.  Despite multiple corrections (over several hours), her blood sugar was still 335 when we left Tyler.

I had a couple of stops to make, so it took us a little over an hour to get home.  When we got home, Faith was asleep, so I walked around to let Ruby out.  I was going to let her out and unload the car before waking Faith to get her out.  As soon as I got around to Ruby's door, she jumped out and immediately jumped for the bringsel.  (She currently doesn't alert in the car.  She gets very anxious.   We are trying to help her work through that.)  I could tell by the intensity of her alert that I needed to check immediately, so I checked Faith's blood sugar while she was still in her carseat.  Her blood sugar had dropped from 335 to 67 in barely over an hour!  I immediately grabbed a juice box and she drank it down quickly.  Her symptoms seemed to be worsening, though, rather than improving, so I yanked her out of her carseat and ran inside.  I opened another juice box and by this time she was shaking SO hard.  It was so scary.  I sat down on the couch and put her in my lap.  She started screaming, "I want my mommy! I want my mommy!" over and over again.  She was SO confused and disoriented and shaking so hard.  I couldn't get her to understand or realize that I was her mommy and she was in my lap!

I put the juice box straw into her mouth and she wouldn't drink it.  I rechecked her bg and she was still dropping.  She was now down to 53.  I could tell by her worsening symptoms that we were rushing headlong into dangerous territory.  I squeezed another juice box into her mouth.  All the while she is still screaming for her mommy.  I sat there holding her, trying to get her to understand that I was right there.  She would scream for a few minutes and then get quiet and get this far off look in her eyes and then go right back to screaming for her mommy.  A few minutes later her intense shaking started to ease up a bit and a few minutes after that I could get her to look at me.  She seemed to be coming around.

As Faith's blood sugar started to come up her shaking began to subside, but still various parts of her body would jump and jerk.  Her head would jerk backwards... her shoulder...her foot... her arm.... her leg - it was so hard to watch.

I sat there holding her, fighting back tears, and thanking God for Ruby.  Had she not alerted as soon as we got home this would have been even worse.

A few minutes later Chuck and the big kids came home.  We had planned to carve pumpkins, pop popcorn, eat candy, and watch movies that night.  Managing diabetes is a daily battle and this disease never sleeps, but life must go on.

I know this, but all I wanted to do was lay in bed and cry.  Between the man sharing that morning that his Type One loved one had died and fighting a low for MY Type One loved one's life, I was drained.

Oh, how I pray for a cure...

1 comment:

  1. These diabetic assistance dogs are amazing. I am glad you are sharing this story.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...