You can take our insulin-producing beta cells, but you will never take our spirit!!!!

So , I am sorry to start this way, but F-you Diabetes! Today marks 2 years since the day you invaded my little boy’s body. And man, what a ride! You stole my son’s carefree childhood, you stole his tender baby soft skin and left track marks on his butt, scar tissue on his stomach and arms and callouses on his fingers. You stole his dreams of being an astronaut and a pilot and his dream of being a Marine and fighting for his country on the front lines. You keep him up at night, you make him shake and have headaches and stomach aches, you give him ketones, you make him hungry and thirsty. You try everyday to take over. Some days it would be so easy to let you, to lay down and say, “Okay Diabetes, you win.” But from my son, you will never hear those words.  You try to take his spirit and his independence, but those you CANNOT have. You can drive him high and plummet him low, you can make us both angry, sad and tired at times, you can make us cry, but you CANNOT have his spirit. He will continue to be happy, and active and successful, I will never let you teach him that he cannot do anything he sets his mind to. You will NEVER stand in his way. You were strong enough to kill his pancreas, and you will try to kill his nerves, his eyes, his limbs, but you will not succeed. You cannot win. We are stronger than you. Some day in his life time and God willing in mine, we will KILL you, we will find a way to cure Diabetes. But even if that doesn’t happen, you still will not win. I will spend all of my time being diligent in his care, doing my best to keep his blood sugars in range, and I will laugh at you when he eats cake and cookies and when he plays soccer or football or goes through puberty because try as you may, YOU WILL NOT WIN, I will not let you beat him down. He is an amazingly strong little man, and already in just 2 years I have watched him in amazement as he takes you on, with a smile and an unbelievably strong spirit, so I say again, you may have taken his pancreas, but you will never take his spirit!

Who invited you, Diabetes???

Certainly not me! And I am guessing Matt would say, not him either!

I recently had a discussion with a friend and fellow Type 1 Mama about writing a list of what I hate about Diabetes. I would have to say that right at the top of that list is the uncanny ability diabetes has to ruin just about everything fun! I know, I know…I should “see the glass half  full”, “think of all the blessings diabetes has brought into our lives”, “think of how strong Matt will be” and (my personal favorite) “be thankful it’s not cancer”  and all of the other stupid things people say when they don’t know what else to say…WELL NO SHIT!!!!

But I am sorry, for this moment I am going to vent about what an unwelcome party guest Diabetes has been thus far! Numbers soar and then plummet with little or no warning and sites always seem to fail at birthday parties, camp, amusement parks, etc.  As type 1 moms and kids we have all become experts in crisis intervention and problem solving in a would be crisis. We are the MacGyvers of life with Type 1 Diabetes if you will! Doing things such as Ninja site changes or giving shots or site changes in dirty bathrooms and porta-potties, weighing and measuring food, counting carbs and sometimes GUESSING the carbs in cakes and ice cream, cotton candy and (God forbid) fried dough!

WHAT??? Your “diabetic” child shouldn’t be eating that should they? F-OFF.  Do you really think I would feed my kid this if it would harm him?? Really? Do you really think he should be deprived of all those signature childhood junk food icons just because his body decided one sultry August morning to attack itself??? UGH!  And NO you don’t know the answers…just like I don’t always get it right. So please STOP telling me how I can “fix” it all by feeding him right or multi-vitamins or some friggen fungus that grows on the shady side of a tree in East Zimbabwe!

Yes, we try to learn what causes our children’s blood glucose  to spike or go low, and we minimize or eliminate those things on most days, just like you try to make healthy choices for your kids. But remember, our kids don’t get to pig out because it’s vacation or gorge themselves on popcorn in a movie theatre without feeling like shit later if we as Moms and Dads aren’t diligent in checking and correcting, checking and correcting, checking and correcting…ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT LONG, 24/7/365…NO EXCEPTIONS.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH, that’s good. I feel better now 🙂

Ninja site changes

Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up! If you are a type 1 mama, I am sure you either have experienced something similar or will eventually! It was the kind of thing I wanted to wake someone up for, just to prove it actually happened!

So here is how it went; we had some company, all four boys were sleeping in Matt’s room, 2 were under his bed and I had to move his ladder so they had room. I went in the room just before I was going to bed, around midnight.  I was trying so hard to be so super quiet as the boys Mom had told me they were really light sleepers. So of course, he was high and needed a correction, so I dial up his pod to give him insulin and it keeps beeping at me that it’s out of range. What the frig?  So I just keep moving it around trying to get it to connect, and each time it beeps LOUDLY.  Finally it connects and I can hear the pump vibrating, which makes no sense, so all of a sudden I realize it is sitting on the edge of the headboard, (giving the bed insulin mind you!) CRAP!  Now I have a choice, I can wake him up to give him  a new site and risk waking all the boys up, give him an injection or attempt a site change while he sleeps. Now, you have to understand that Matt is a VERY heavy sleeper. He sleeps through, shots and blood sugar checks…always has, he even eats tablets in his sleep when he is low.  So I go for option 3.   Now, picture this:  there I am, in the middle of the night, pod in hand, balancing on one foot on a toddler size wooden chair at the head of his loft bed, trying to unwrap him from his cocoon of blankets, pull his pants halfway down to expose his backside, swipe with alcohol and insert needle all without waking anyone up! The whole time, I am literally giggling at the ridiculousness of a midnight ninja site change wishing some one was here to see what we type 1 mamas can do!