Rylie's Journey to a Diabetic Alert Dog

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Rylie's Journey to a Diabetic Alert Dog

Raising funds for a Diabetic Alert Dog (D.A.D) for Rylie! Donate here: http://tinyurl.com/5387378z

24/07/2025

She’s never been a great sleeper. Even now she still likes me to be right next to her when she falls asleep. Sometimes she still holds my hand. In her younger years I would pray daily that she would sleep through the night because I needed the sleep as an exhausted new mom.

I thought I knew what tired was then. But then diabetes came along and shook me by the shoulders as if to say “you’re in it for life, friend. Get used to it.”

I no longer pray for her to sleep through the night like I did when she was a baby. These days, I pray for her to sleep through the night so that she doesn’t have to wake up to drink juice or eat something at 3:00 am and then get up to go to school two hours later.

I pray each night for good blood sugars so that she feels rested and ready for her day ahead like her friends or the other kids at school.

There’s a joke in the T1D community that having a kid diagnosed with diabetes is like having a newborn all over again. That is very true. The difference now is that I’m no longer a new mom, and I’ve learned to live off little sleep over the years. But she’s still growing and needs every second of hers - and I’ll never feel okay about sending her out for the day after those unpredictable nights of juice boxes and alarms. 💙🩵

17/06/2025

A glimpse into some of the things my girl goes through every day. She really is so tough! We are her caretakers and do our best to lighten that load for her but it is truly a 24/7 disease that requires constant supervision. Late at night you can usually find me (or Shaun) up monitoring her blood sugars or giving her treatment. We make about 100 (it seems) decisions a day that all revolve around her numbers. It’s truly crazy to me sometimes that this is “normal” life for us now, even after 3 years!

Remember the 4 T’s of Type 1 Diabetes:
Thirsty
Thinner
Toilet
Tired

16/04/2025

Oklahoma's House Bill 1178, aiming to criminalize service animal misrepresentation, advances towards the Governor's desk. Lawmakers hope it will protect trained service animals and handlers from disruptions

14/04/2025

Day 1 at home with Maisie!

06/02/2025

Should we do a part 3? Y’all had some good questions for us!

27/01/2025

Some service dog questions and answers! What questions do you have for us?

17/11/2024

Here is a great example of where service dogs can help fill in the gaps of the amazing diabetes technology that we rely on to keep Rylie healthy.

This is her glucose monitor. It lasts for 10 days. It takes readings of her blood sugars (interstitial fluid) every 5 minutes. She still has 5 days left of her 10 days on this sensor but the last two days it has been “glitching.” This can be for various reasons - like coming loose on her skin, laying on it with too much pressure while she sleeps, or just a ‘bad’ sensor that was never going to last the full ten days anyway. This happens more often than we care for. Mostly because we rely on her CGM readings so much that when they fail to work properly, we have to stop what we’re doing and figure out what’s going on. Manually checking her blood sugar with a finger poke, calibrating the numbers on her CGM app, examining the CGM insertion site to make sure it’s not coming up out of her skin, figuring out if it’s a bad sensor or just acting weird for a short period of time and will be back to normal after the next reading or two, figuring out if we need to replace it completely and dreading making her poke herself with another needle to put another one on… the list goes on.

It’s another example of the ways that diabetes is ever-present and needing constant management and oversight.

If Rylie’s dog was here, we would know if her numbers were out of range before her CGM even catches on or has the chance to “glitch”. Thats invaluable. Her diabetic alert dog is another tool we can use to keep her safe and healthy and allow her to be a kid. It is moments like these that we really can’t wait to bring our Maisie home!

22/10/2024

This poor girl. Back to school tomorrow after fall break. She was so tired all day today and she wanted to go to sleep early. But diabetes had other plans! Her Dexcom fell off while I was at work so she was doing finger pokes all day. Then her pod expired. So tonight became an unexpected double site change. Then her Dexcom was reading low when it finished warming up so she had to wake up and do a finger poke to calibrate (she wasn’t low). I know she’s frustrated. I’m frustrated. I hope she’s not exhausted tomorrow! Sometimes this is just the day we have with diabetes.

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