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.