Prom

Among the things I was (somewhat irrationally) worried about years ago was prom. It seemed impossible that the little person so completely dependent on me for all of her insulin-related needs could independently navigate a night of hot hors d'oeuvres, a buffet dinner and hours of dancing. And how would the prom dress fashion challenge work out with an insulin pump to incorporate into the equation?

Fast forward to May, and she had an amazing night.

The dress was gorgeous and nobody would have guessed there was so much hardware underneath it.

She counted the carbs for appetizers, a Shirley temple, dinner and chocolate lava cake.

She carried a roll of glucose tabs in her clutch purse, and simply went to the bar for a cranberry juice when the dancing led to a low. She was with friends who would help if she needed it.

Our awesome school nurse was a chaperone and was armed with a spare infusion set, a jar of glucose tabs and glucagon. Their only conversation of the night was about my daughter's dress.

Despite all the push to trade in the Animas Ping for a new pump this spring, we hung onto it long enough to use the remote bolus feature so that there were no awkward moments of reaching under the dress or disappearing to the ladies room every time food appeared.

Prom, and so many other things done with diabetes, required prior planning and thoughtful clothes-shopping. It was made less stressful because there were people around who were prepared to be supportive. And then? It was just as fun as it would've been with out diabetes.

Friday

It was 6:45 p.m.

My daughter had gone straight from play practice to meet friends who were watching the end of a wrestling match in the high school gym. The plan was to go out for dinner afterwards.

I received a text:

'Dexi is dead and the meter won't turn on.'

We knew the Dexcom sensor was set to expire before the evening was out. But plan B was that she had her meter and would be fine using that instead.

But now she was not.

I grabbed two AAA batteries and let her know I would meet her at the front doors of the school.

'But what if it isn't the batteries?,' my daughter wisely replied.

So I also grabbed her spare pink one-touch mini meter.  Since two dead meters don't equal a useful one, I popped in a test strip to check it, and, inevitably, its battery was dead. It takes one obscure flat battery. By the time I found a spare one of those, the contents of our 'diabetes box' were strewn across my daughter's floor and she was texting, 'Are you here yet?'

I pulled up to the doors, and she came out. She sat in the car with me and replaced the batteries in the regular meter. "Low meter batteries," it read.

"But I just put them in there- you brought new batteries, right?" I had, straight out of a container full of new batteries in the basement, I reassured her. Fortunately, the pink mini meter was working just fine so she was equipped for dinner.

She enjoyed her evening out and got home early enough to put in a new Dexcom sensor before bed.

The next morning I replaced the batteries in the usual meter one more time, and it worked.

Weird stuff can happen on any given Friday.

Thursday

My daughter and I had dinner around 5:45. It was a regular meal. In fact it was leftovers, so it was the exact same thing she'd eaten earlier in the week. She bolused for the carbs with no correction since her blood sugar was in range.

She left at 6:25 for jazz band. I left at 7:10 for choir rehearsal. My husband, who we usually leave home alone on Thursday nights, was out late for a work event. By the time I pulled into my destination, I had a Dexcom alert on my phone. My daughter was low-ish. She was in the 60's. Which had happened the night before after dinner too, and she'd gotten kind of stuck there. There are a couple of days every month when sticky lows tend to occur, and I began to wonder if that was what was happening.

I texted her suggesting that, given the stickiness of last night's low, suspending the pumps's insulin delivery for a while might be a good idea.

By the time I got upstairs to my rehearsal I had another Dexcom alert and she was now in the 50's. She had not texted back. I resorted to texting, "Please tell me you are okay." Which at the time I felt might not be well received, but I was nervous enough not to care.

She replied that she was, that she would suspend insulin delivery on her pump, and that she'd had a juice box.

For the next 25 minutes I sang and texted and watched the Dexcom app and wished my husband was home, two blocks from my daughter, to run her up some more juice. The Dexcom alarms went from low to urgent low. I realized I'd stopped singing entirely.

By 7:55 my daughter had consumed everything in her bag and a sugar packet she'd scavenged from the band director's desk. Her blood sugar had dropped into the 40's.

I left rehearsal, clutching my phone, mysteriously muttering, "I need to go," and zipping out the door.

By the time I got in my car, 2.5 miles away from the high school, the Dexcom app read 'LOW.' That meant her blood sugar had dropped below 40.

When I texted my daughter I was leaving, she replied, 'Why? No. I'm fine. Go back. Don't Worry.'

That didn't work.

I did not drive the speed limit. I texted and drove. I Dexcomed and drove. And I prayed that my daughter would continue to text me and that all of the steps she'd taken so far would tide her over until I could help.

I ran in and out of my house to grab a juice bottle. I double-checked I still had glucagon in my purse from our Christmas trip.

She was back 'up' to 44.

I texted her I was on the way to the school with the juice.

'Well I can't leave.'

I left a bottle of Apple and Eve outside the band room door, hoping nobody would think it was anything other than a sealed bottle of apple juice, and asked her to let me know when she'd gotten it. I assumed she would come to her senses and sneak out and retrieve it quickly and surreptitiously. If she didn't I'd have to go back in and make a scene.

She'd retrieved and consumed it long before I'd driven the two blocks back home.

As I obsessively refreshed the Dexcom app while trying to distract myself with something on the Food Network, I saw the numbers begin to rise and I began to breathe.

When jazz band was over at 9, she drove home with a safe blood sugar of 90.

This wasn't a case of being unprepared. Maybe she was un-overprepared. But when leaving the house for two and a half hours, it's extraordinary to expect to be in a situation where you consume 45 grams of carb and suspend insulin delivery while your blood sugar continues to drop like a rock. At least after an accurately bolused dinner, and no unusual level of activity.

I'm grateful for whatever combination of grace, steps taken by us, and dumb luck saved us from a bigger disaster. From 7:30-9 last night was the most scared I've been of diabetes in years. We work so hard to keep things predictable and on an even keel but this was a sobering reminder that diabetes is, inherently, a dangerous disease.

Every diabetes scare we've had has resulted in steps towards preventing a repeat. Extra juice bottles will be squirreled away around my daughter's home-away-from-home in the band room and stage area of the high school. She'll stuff a few more airheads in her diabetes bag.

Unfortunately we know that there's always another unpredictable moment lurking, on any given Thursday.

You Know What To Do

We visited the endocrinologist a couple of weeks ago.

My daughter's A1C was up a smidge, which isn't unusual at her end of summer visit. We do better keeping her blood sugar stable when her schedule is more predictable, as it is during the school year.

The numbers downloaded at the beginning of the visit from the pump and Dexcom covered the prior two weeks of blood sugars. One week was from vacation and the other was from the youth group mission trip. Both involved strange meals at strange times, late nights, periods of heavy activity at all different times of day and night, and at least during the second week, a few moments of stress.

There seemed to be a couple of patterns, but they could just have easily been a pattern of what happens when you follow a heavy, late lunch with a busy afternoon, an unusual dinner, a walk, and no 9 p.m. snack.

After talking things over, the endo said something like this:

Look- it looks like you need a little more insulin in a couple of different places here. You could tweak a couple of things now, like maybe this after-dinner spike, but maybe you don't want to do too much yet. Why don't you wait a week- get through band camp where you don't want a bunch of lows, and then once school starts look at these patterns again and make the adjustments. You know what to do. And hopefully by then you'll have the G6 which'll make it so much easier.

Band camp was, predictably, another week of unusual eating, busy schedule and extreme heat. It felt safer to run a little higher than what we'd ordinarily consider ideal.

School started last week with a weird schedule for the first day and an unexpected half day on day 2 due to a heat advisory, which was followed by a takeout lunch with friends. Friday night was the first marching band performance at the football game, preceded by a 4:30 p.m. dinner. This week will be slightly more predictable, so we'll see if some basal tweaks we made over the weekend make a difference. And we'll add more insulin for dinner. That was the one change we did make after the endo visit but it isn't doing the trick yet. No G6 yet either- more on that another day- but we've been managing T1D in a growing, changing child since long before any CGM at all.

We'll keep watching and adjusting. We know what to do.

Nurse Perks

Happy National Nurse's Week!

My daughter has, for over 10 years, almost always enjoyed going to the nurse's office.

The minutes she was late for lunch in elementary and middle school were hard, and she never enjoys being low or needing a site change. But there are upsides to those nurse visits:

There's often something interesting going on in the office. An overheard phone call to a parent who doesn't want to pick up a sick kid. Or a bizarre gym injury. Or an update on the current plague, be it flu or lice or a lingering cold.

There's a kind, interested adult there. When the office is quiet, there's conversation. Our school nurses have known more about my daughter than most of her teachers and even some of her friends. And vice-versa. While killing the time it takes for a low blood sugar to come up they talk about family, vacations, restaurants, afterschool activities and more.

Teachers and other staff stop by. My daughter has overheard, and often been included in, conversations amongst school staff. It's pretty interesting to hear the 'grown-ups' talk. Some nurse's offices are adjacent to the main office, providing yet another interesting source of conversation and information.

There's air conditioning. This is no small plus in September or June around here. On elementary school field day, or as an escape from the south-facing third floor middle school classroom, a low-ish blood sugar was a free ticket to relief.

I'm incredibly grateful for the nurses who've sat in those offices over the years. Being concerned about and dealing with my child's medical needs are line items in their job descriptions. The relationships they've built with her, and the extra kindnesses along the way have been above and beyond.

Thank you, this Nurse's Week, to all the school nurses who make their offices a safe, pleasant and even desirable place for their kids with diabetes.

The Owl Bag is in the Orange Toolbox

"The owl bag is in the orange toolbox," the text read.

Nope. This isn't where I reveal that we're part of an intriguing spy ring.

The owl bag is, in fact, a small insulated cosmetic bag which currently holds a glucagon kit, one-touch mini meter, strips, a lancet and a pouch of glucose gel.

The orange tool box is a standard-sized portable toolbox which holds a vast array of items useful for repairing band instruments. Screwdrivers of all sizes with screws to fit everything from a piccolo to a marimba, pliers and wires, glue and assorted tape, reeds, mouthpieces and so much more are all housed in this very heavy toolbox which travels to the field for every rehearsal and with the band for every game, competition and concert.

We turned over the owl bag before summer band rehearsals began for freshman year. Over the course of that first year, it could be found in the director's desk drawer, in his messenger bag and on the sidelines of the football field. Last summer, at the start of summer rehearsals, I received the above cryptic text from my daughter. The band director, wisely we think, decided that if the owl bag was always in the orange toolbox, then it would always be in close proximity to the band.

We removed the owl bag from the toolbox and handed it over to the nurse who went on the recent overnight music department trip. It held just the right collection of things the nurse needed to carry. The day the kids returned to school post-trip, I was reassured by a mid-day text from my daughter:

"The owl bag is back in the orange toolbox."

Mission accomplished.

Thankful

Unlike last year's expedition, which could have been subtitled, 'airplane flight to 5 days of walking in chaotic environments,' this year's music department trip seemed like a manageable adventure. It was a four hour bus trip to spend 3 days and 2 nights in and around an interesting city. Because of the presence of a great school nurse, concerned chaperones and staff, and friends who have my daughter's back, we decided, with my daughter, that she'd travel without a parent. Here's the note [with awkward edits for privacy] I sent to the band director on the Monday after this year's trip:

Just a note to say thanks for a great music trip.

 

What a nice opportunity it was for the kids to attend Thursday's concert.  [My daughter] was especially excited to see such an incredible piano concerto performed. 

 

Between the concert, the chance for feedback and work on the concert band's competition pieces, and a fun and interesting collection of places to explore with friends, [my daughter] had a terrific time.

 

We're always happy to be involved in the life of the band, including chaperoning. But we're also grateful for the steps you and [the high school] as a whole have taken to allow [my daughter] to participate fully and safely without us present, encouraging her growing independence both diabetes-wise and beyond.

 

Looking forward to hearing tomorrow night's performance!

I mailed a similarly thankful note to the nurse who accompanied the kids on the trip. My daughter was in touch with her regularly via text, and they always knew where the other was. The nurse carried a little bag (within her giant 'nurse bag') with glucagon, glucose gel, and a spare meter set. Her assistance was never needed.

These notes reflected my acute awareness that my child was fortunate to have such a fun and positive trip.  There are other kids who are allowed to have these kinds of experiences but with much less quality support. And there are kids who are told (illegally but indisputably) that they can't participate at all. For three days Dexcom Share was my most-used app. The texts about the frosted flakes for breakfast and the bus full of rice crispy treats were cringe-worthy. But mostly, I'm thankful.

The Unconcerned Hostage

'I'm high and won't come down in the nurse going to change the site,' the text read, belying the fact that she's takes Honors English.

My daughter changed her pump site on her own, no problem, and we texted a bit about dosing insulin afterwards to bring the high blood sugar down.

As it turned out the nurse was at lunch and a favorite teacher was covering the nurse's office until her return.

Then this text: 'She wants me to stay until I come down more what should I do??'

After a little more (still unpunctuated) communication, we clarified that the nurse would be back in about 15 minutes and wanted to see my daughter before she returned to class.

We chose not to negotiate an early release. We might have argued if she'd been missing Chemistry instead of Driver's Ed, or if there hadn't been a favorite teacher to chat with.


It's November...Diabetes Awareness Month! My plan for this month involves stories. Simple, everyday, real-life stories about living with diabetes. I plan to tell them here as narratives, like this one, just snippets of a day with diabetes, and I plan to tell them, or stories like them, more often in the 'real world' this month when friends ask, 'How's it going,' or relatives ask what I've been up to.  

No News

 

A couple of days ago, my daughter's Dexcom stopped sending data to her phone. So therefore her phone has stopped sending data to my phone.

 

Because we have a Dexcom G4 model with a receiver she keeps with her at all times, and because this receiver is still streaming her data, this is really no big deal. She never looks at her data on her phone, only on the receiver she wears on her person, so she was unaware, until I informed her, that the phone communication piece had stopped working.

 

Interestingly, I also did not notice for over 24 hours.

 

We know how to fix this problem. It's a glitch which happens occasionally and is repaired by disconnecting and reconnecting the Bluetooth connection between the receiver and my daughter's phone. It takes several minutes and sometimes a couple of tries, but it's not a big deal.

 

Yet now it is Friday and I still have "NO DATA." This is not a surprise, since everything about the past two days is a complete blur. In addition to the usual school schedule there have been 3 or 4 hour evening band rehearsals, a stage crew meeting for the fall play, the usual mountain of homework, and I think she managed to eat and sleep.

 

Having NO DATA at my immediate disposal has been interesting. I don't miss the alarms and the concurrent worry. I am not feeling anxious about missing the highs and lows, trusting that my daughter is handling any issues on her own, and knowing that she would have informed me had there been any major problems requiring multiple juice boxes or site replacements. We're still using the receiver in our bedroom at night to alert us to any nighttime blood sugar excursions, so I would have been involved in any overnight issues anyway.

 

No news is not all good news, though. What I do miss is being able to look at the big picture. One peek a day (or noticing alarms at the same time every day) provides an opportunity to fix problems in a timely manner. And, while I'm the third string back-up for any marching band emergency, I do miss being alerted to any significant blood sugars while she's at those nighttime rehearsals.

 

My daughter has a quiet evening tonight before the last big weekend of marching band. She'll need to get some homework done and practice the piano, but she'll get to eat dinner without homework in front of her, and maybe even watch a favorite t.v. show.

 

And she'll find a few minutes to reconnect her Dexcom to her phone, just in time for what promises to be a chaotic weekend diabetes-wise.

 

Cue the alarms.

 

 

The Drop-Off Line

For a couple of years now my daughter's had a little inventory she's run through before leaving the house for almost anywhere, except, for some reason, school:

"Phone. Meter. Dexi." If one of them isn't on her person or in her bag, she'll go get it. If she's got it all, she heads out the door.

On day seven of school I received a text: I forgot Dexi. The Dexcom receiver was, indeed, still sitting in the kitchen.

Day 10 brought a similar text, except she'd also forgotten the meter:

The school is only a couple of blocks away- a two minute drive at the most. Unless it's 15 minutes before school starts. Then it's an excruciating crawl with both vehicular and foot traffic clogging every route and intersection. Which is why, no matter the weather, and even though it's essentially a straight uphill climb, my daughter walks to school.

Accessing the school after classes begin is, as I learned last year when dropping off the Dexcom receiver, it's own kind of challenge. I was buzzed through two sets of locked doors and talked with a couple of school personnel, after which my daughter had to run through the nurse's office between classes to pick up the missing item.

So I drove to school, both times, pulling into the drop-off line with my flashers on while she ran out of the building to take things from me through the open car window before the first bell. She was efficient both times, but I imagine the people behind me still looked on with a combination of confusion and irritation.

While the texts may look terse in the photo, my daughter was, in person, both upset she'd forgotten her supplies, and incredibly grateful that I could drop them off. There's a spare meter at school, which she could have grabbed from the nurse's office if she had needed to. But the absence of the Dexcom info she's used to relying on made her uncomfortable, especially in the first week or two of school when the routine is still new and is therefore messing with her blood sugars.

"Phone. Meter. Dexi."

The inventory is now part of our morning farewell routine. If she doesn't say it, I do. One of the perks of our current house is that I, theoretically, should never have to withstand the ordeal of the morning drop-off line. Nobody should have to do so without a child in the car.

Back to School Year #13

My daughter went back to school this month- for the 13th time if we include the preschool years. It's still never easy.

Back to school is a challenge for most kids. There are difficult teachers, tough social situations, and strict schedules to keep.  But for my kid and many like her, fall's biggest stumbling block is diabetes.

The back-to-school diabetes problems are ever-present, but not always the same. Some years there's a new nurse who we have to meet and coordinate with. Some years there's a new activity which coincides with the start of school, adding another diabetes thing to think about. Some years the time of lunch has changed (like the 'year of brunch,' linked for you here though I'm going to choose not to reread and relive the horror). Some years gym proves to be a seemingly insurmountable obstacle (like last year, when at some points it was simultaneously terrifying and ridiculous). Some years there's a teacher who just doesn't quite get it. Or one who's extra nervous. This year we've added a daily walk to school, just a couple of blocks but most of it straight uphill.

There's one back-to-school diabetes challenge that's constant from year to year: the overall change in the daily schedule. August is lazy- featuring vacation, the backyard, books, friends and the pool. For the past couple of years August has also included sleeping late at least a few days a week, and alternate sedentary stretches of binge-watching Netflix and power-finishing summer homework. Going from a slow, sedentary start to 6:30 a.m. breakfast followed by a brisk walk to school would be a jolt to anyone's system. Adding diabetes requires an annual investment in juice boxes and a lot of dosage tweaking.

By the fourth day of school this year we'd already changed the breakfast bolus ratio and several basal rates. Twice.  And she was still eating glucose tabs every day half an hour before lunch. We've gotten that to the point where she's usually just barely 80 at lunchtime but then shooting way up into the high 200's late in the day- except when she has marching band in which case she's staying steady and then tanking overnight. We will not discuss what the weekend numbers look like with an ever-changing band/homework/fun/sleep schedule.

Every year kids face challenges going back to school, diabetes-related or otherwise. They come home and tell their parents, who provide any number of phrases to soothe them: This too shall pass. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Life's too short to worry about that. Just do your best. And so we'll continue to apply these same pithy phrases to our approach to managing the back-to-school diabetes adjustment. We'll do our best, making tweaks every couple of days, trying not to worry, knowing that we will get through this, stronger in the end, as we always do.

An Hour's Worth of Emotions

Today let’s revisit a prompt from 2014 - May is Mental Health Month so now seems like a great time to explore the emotional side of living with, or caring for someone with, diabetes. What things can make dealing with diabetes an emotional issue for you and / or your loved one, and how do you cope?

I present to you the story of the events of Monday morning, with words describing our wide-ranging emotions about said events highlighted in bold print:

On Monday, my kid arrived at school anxious- not about the first day of standardized testing, but about which teacher had been chosen to proctor her private testing room. Her 504 plan has accommodations allowing her to stop and restart testing to deal with any diabetes issues, so she is separated from other kids since her test might be timed differently than that of others. "It's so awkward, mom, I hope it's a teacher I know at least." She checked the list posted in the school lobby and was confused. She had, inexplicably, been assigned to a room with a large group of special education kids. The texts to me began...

"Help! What do I do?"

"Go to guidance and explain that you've been told you were testing alone."

We texted back and forth for 25 minutes or so while she sat in the guidance office. People came in and out asking her questions and then disappearing for stretches of time. All of the teachers not assigned to a testing room were summoned to the principal's office via the PA system. She eventually stopped answering my texts at which point I assumed the situation had been resolved and that she had started taking the test somewhere- with someone.

Scrolling back through those texts, the words and emojis described the following emotions:

Surprise
Anger
Confusion
Frustration
Boredom
Impatience
Sadness
Anxiety
Loneliness
Aggravation
Annoyance
Hope
Disbelief
Stress

Those were interspersed, because how else were we going to cope, with

Amusement and
Laughter



In the end she was relieved that it got resolved, and amazed that the stress hadn't spiked her blood sugar. We were surprised that the rules required 2 teachers to be in the room with her and thankful that they were two teachers she knew and liked. They helped her settle in well and she feels confident about how she did on the day's tests.

In the end, I was proud of her for handling the situation herself and happy that technology allowed me to support her via text.

I would be embarrassed, however, if school officials discovered the number of circus-themed emojis I sent over the course of the morning.

While this story highlights in a somewhat lighthearted way how diabetes can lead to a wide range of emotions in just an hour of every day life, the possibility of long-term serious mental health issues is real. Depression, burnout, anxiety and other mental health issues impact most people with diabetes and their caregivers at one time or another. To read other perspectives on this topic, click here.

The Trip

I chaperoned a five day, four night, 120 kid high school field trip last month.

While there was a school nurse traveling with the group, and while my kid does most of her diabetes management alone at this point, I wasn't completely comfortable letting her take this trip on her own. And, perhaps more importantly, she didn't feel completely comfortable either. Our concerns included:

-The farthest my kid has ever travelled for a sleepover is 5 blocks from home. She's never been away for more than about 18 hours. Going from that level of overnight diabetes self-care to a 4 night trip over a thousand miles from home felt to both of us like way too big of a leap.

-The trip involved air travel.  My arrival for an emergency (gastrointestinal illness, first-ever glucagon use, other unforeseeable situation) would be both significantly delayed and extraordinarily expensive. Also, while I'm sure someone could have walked her through airport security, the TSA checkpoint is a minefield for people with diabetes and we were concerned about her potential need for a strong advocate should she get pulled aside.

-The trip involved five days of dining out. My daughter has never managed more than two restaurant meals in a row on her own and was nervous about not having someone there to eyeball the carb counts with her and/or help her pick up the pieces after a bad guess.

-The trip's itinerary was intense. And the itinerary didn't lie. My Fitbit tells me I walked 10 miles a day with lots of 'active' time. We rose by 6:30, earlier some days, and the kids were not required to be in their rooms until 11 p.m. There were regular transitions from place to place with few moments to stop and regroup. Amusement park rides, swimming pools, and several performances including marching in a parade were all on the agenda. We were concerned that the level of activity combined with the lack of time to stop and think about diabetes could lead to problems significant enough to slow my kid down or derail her participation. It felt important to have someone there both to remind and support her as she took the time to care for her diabetes, and to stay behind with her should she need to stop and wait out a low or trouble-shoot a high.

We decided that sending her on this trip without a parent was too much to ask of my child, the nurse, and the staff. Also, spending 5 days flipping between the Dexcom app and the 'Find My Friends' app on my phone while simultaneously trying to remember to breathe didn't really appeal. After a couple of conversations with the teacher in charge of the trip I was, despite a certain level of anxiety about chaperoning a group of high school kids, grateful to be given the opportunity to go.

On the trip I performed a variety of general chaperone duties, got to know some great kids and adults, and got to be part of a unique adventure. As far as my mom-of-a-kid-with-diabetes role, I mostly watched from a safe distance while my kid did her own thing. She talked to the TSA people on her own. She kept the Dexcom with her overnight and woke to respond to its alarms. She did her own site change in her hotel room. She counted her own carbs, asked questions at restaurants, and, on more than one occasion, sent back sweetened iced tea for the unsweetened she'd ordered. She made decisions about dosing and snacking based on her activity level. She carried her own supplies. Her blood sugars weren't perfect, but given the food and schedule they were good enough. She spent the days with her friends and I spent them with the other chaperones.

As it turned out my presence was more of a convenience than a necessity. I provided some in-line coaching and moral support as we went through airport security. I handed her extra water to combat the effect of heat on her blood sugars. I helped her with an unanticipated Dexcom sensor change when the one we put in the day before the trip inexplicably conked out. I met her at a water flume ride to hold her diabetes stuff so it didn't get soaked. I carried the glucagon, a spare infusion set and some extra glucose tabs, always close enough to jump in to assist if needed. When the large group divided and headed to different destinations I stuck with my kid, making the division of chaperones a non-issue. My presence allowed the nurse traveling with us to focus on other kids without worrying about keeping track of mine.

But now that I've seen how well she handled most everything without my help, I'm excited for her to have an opportunity to travel without me. Just maybe on a trip that's a little closer, and a little slower-paced.