Too late to get it revved up for the big feast, but something to be thankful for nevertheless.
Happy Thanksgiving!
For Me
This is where needed to be yesterday afternoon. The 'to do' list was as endless as always but in a flash of wisdom I realized I needed to take a few minutes for myself.
It's been a long week. With my husband traveling, diabetes has been my responsibility alone. He generally takes late evening checks and every other overnight. As a person who needs her sleep, I'm dragging. During daylight hours, I've been working through the paperwork for a Dexcom system, analyzing new trends in blood sugar numbers in child who's grown an inch in one month, and troubleshooting my fair share of random incidents such as this one.
I could have done many things in the hour before school pick-up yesterday. I chose to take a walk.Views like the one above, the sound of ducks quacking, and the wind at my back were what I needed. The exercise sent me back energized despite my sleeplessness.
I often forget to do things like this for myself, to fuel myself up for the journey. It's never the wrong choice though. The to do list will still be there when I get back and I'll be better equipped to tackle it.
World Diabetes Day 2013
My daughter is excited about World Diabetes Day this year.
She made postcards similar to the one above to send to 5 people around the country.
She's wearing blue from head to toe (almost...she'd now like a pair of blue shoes).
Her second-ever instagram post went up last night. She posted an image reading 'wear blue tomorrow for world diabetes day!'
She scrolled through images tagged #WDD this morning, liking and sharing. She was excited to find so many and excited to post her own later this afternoon.
She's intrigued by the idea of buildings lit in blue tonight and other unique events to raise awareness around the globe.
She's planning to do the big blue test in gym.
She likes that there's a day set aside to spread the word about diabetes and why we need a cure.
I love that she wants to do all these things. I love that she's not embarrassed to advocate for herself and the rest of the people in the world who live with diabetes.
May we learn from her example and find a way to raise awareness today, particularly beyond those who are already well aware of the challenges diabetes brings.
Sometimes We Forget
One highlight of last weekend's 12th birthday celebration was a day out with two of my daughter's best friends. I took them to lunch, then a to pottery painting place. The party ended at our house with presents and brownies.
She checked her blood sugar as usual before her huge plate of french toast, and we guesstimated carbs as best we could.
We walked half a block over to the pottery place where the girls thoroughly enjoyed painting their own unique pieces. Almost two hours later we headed home.
Presents were opened. Happy Birthday was sung and brownies emerged from the kitchen complete with a candle. The girls enjoyed two apiece with tea or milk.
My daughter was well into her second one, approximately three and a half hours after she tested for lunch, when I realized she hadn't checked since.
At this point, did I:
1. Stop the giggly conversation and send her immediately to wash her hands and check?
or
2. Let her eat her brownie and giggle with her friends, bolusing for the carbs and hoping for the best?
For a couple of reasons I chose 2.
First of all I couldn't bring myself to allow diabetes to break up this birthday moment. She won't have another 12th birthday but diabetes will be a part of every day for the foreseeable future.
Secondly she appeared to be fine; not lethargic like she was very high and not out of it like she was very low. I really did think this through, and if looking at the big picture I'd had any cause for concern then I would have called a time-out.
Thirdly (and maybe I'm just rationalizing here) she was well into the second brownie. What information, exactly, were we going to get from this check? If she was high, would I correct the high and bolus the carbs? Or would I assume the high was at least partially from the brownies? If she was lowish, would I take off some of the carbs I would have bolused or assumed the brownies would shoot her back up anyway?
The end result? Her 90 minutes post-brownie number was 148.
This is obviously not medical advice. We check before eating 99.99% of the time as recommended by every endocrinology team on earth. We simply got lucky with the end result...a little extra birthday gift, perhaps.
Once I'd realized the mistake, the scene took on a bittersweet tone. I guess this is how other kids celebrate their birthdays. There's no awkward pre-cake pause. No blood is involved. There's no possibility that the dessert will be downsized due to an astronomical number. Nobody hovers as the candles are blown out to tally carbs and deliver insulin.
It was nice, if only for a moment, to forget.
A Mystery Story
The phone rang.
'School' read out on the caller ID.
When I answered, I could immediately hear the fuzzy echo of speakerphone.
My daughter's voice: "I don't know what my blood sugar is."
She has 2 meters at school, one with her and one in the nurse's office. There are 3 other kids with diabetes and the nurse has a back-up. There's no way this information wasn't available. "What do you mean?"
"I checked with the one in my bag in the classroom and I was 195 but I felt really high so I came down here anyway. I washed my hands and the one in the nurse's office says I'm 348. I checked again with the one in my bag and it said I was 297. Then we tried the nurse's spare one and it said I was 140."
The nurse chimed in throughout the story and concluded with, "We really aren't sure what to do next."
There I was, on the other end of the phone, expected to solve this problem.
Ultimately we decided that I would come to school with her meter from home, the one we use all day every day. She was instructed to drink some water and went back to class for the time it took me to get there.
I remembered on the way out the door that I had a bottle of control solution. I threw it in my pocket with the trusted meter.
Our meters at school checked out with control solution. The nurse's was a different brand so we couldn't test that one.
My daughter was called down from the classroom. She checked on 4 meters.
Home: 290
Personal Nurse's Office: 260
Purse: 266
Nurse's spare: 254
We corrected using 260 as a safe average and sent her back to class. I left her home meter with her for the day with newly opened test strips.
Meanwhile, Strip Safely anybody? We need to keep encouraging the FDA to tighten standards. I can't figure how this was caused by anything but technology failure.
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