Non-sleep over

Daniel had a couple of friends over last night for an end of school, watch movies, play video games, eat pizza kind of sleepover. Luckily we have a basement *and* an upstairs so I can't hear them (unless they are REALLY loud, which has happened in the past) when they are talking trash at the video games and sneaking upstairs for cookies. One of Daniels' friends, during a past sleepover, ate an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the night... that didn't happen last night.

But at 3 a.m. or so my husband got out of bed and I heard him negotiating with the boys. Apparently the phone rang -- oops, I missed that -- so they were sternly told that enough was enough and GO TO SLEEP.

Phones ringing in the middle of the night always set me off thinking about emergencies. So as Matt settled quickly into dreamland (HOW DOES HE DO THAT???) after grumbling, "no more @*%*$ sleepovers!! -- I stayed awake and day?dreamed scenarios. Then I thought about the movie I saw with Dominic & Nora (Night at the Museum), the salad I had for dinner that I would like to make at home (insalata d'oro, which was a huge pile of diced golden yellow tomatoes with olive oil, basil, goat cheese, and pine nuts and two slices of a delicious, fresh Italian bread) and the list of things to do today, lists for the upcoming vacation..

Basically, I thought my way to 6:30, tossed and turned for 45 minutes, then gave up.

Good morning.

It's exhausting.

It's exhausting trying to make myself understood to teenagers. Or preteens. Or youngsters. Or anybody. Sometimes I think I'm speaking an alien language, and the people to whom I'm speaking are smiling and nodding just to humor me until I go away.

I don't even feel like going into the details. Suffice it to say that I thought I made myself clear, and Daniel thought I did not. Until I blew up, at which point I was, of course, overreacting. Because I initially did not make a clear request, so how could there be follow through?

Oh, yeah, and just ignore all those low insulin warnings and let the pump start sucking air, while you're at it.

ack. Calgon, take me away.

Just a Big Tease

Mother Nature can be cruel. The glorious 70 degree days have retreated, and we have a chance of snow/sleet tonight. I have a souvenir of the lovely weather, however. I did some yard cleanup work when it was balmy outside, and now I have streaks of poison ivy showing up on my arms. Gee, thanks.

Daniel's endo has sent some adjustments to his basaling & bolusing, so I hope that stops the slow creep-up of numbers we've seen lately. Daniel's also trying to control his teenage-boy eating (or should I say shoveling) routine. He gets hungry for a second dinner starting an hour after dinner. I truly don't know how one person can eat such a huge pile of mashed potatoes.

He comes by it honestly, though. Daniel's dad is one of 7 kids, and six in a row were boys. My mother in law says she remembers times when the boys were teenagers -- she would go to the grocery store to get food for the week. Two days later she'd open the refrigerator after coming home from work so she could prepare dinner, and it would be empty. Hollow legs, human vacuums, ever hungry, every one. It's incredible to watch.

In any case, it's hard to control blood sugar when you're eating every hour. So Daniel has promised to try to stop grazing. I'll just keep count of the containers in the refrigerator.

First Place (woo hoo!) and Forgetfulness (boo!)

Nora entered a self portrait that she painted during the school year into a competition at the National Press Club. The competition was sponsored by the National Arts Program.

Nora won first place in her age category! Here's a picture of Nora with her painting & blue ribbon!

Non diabetes stuff going well. Diabetes stuff -- I'm a little frustrated. Daniel forgot his lantus a couple of times this week. Once he remembered it at 1:40 a.m. when he was already between 400 & 500 (the meters aren't so accurate when you get that high). He was spending the night at a friend's house. He took the lantus at that point, then at his regular time the next night because he didn't tell me what he had done. I would have had him take the lantus at 11:40, then earlier the next night.

Then he forgot it again last night (I was out at my yoga class). I found that out when my hubby asked me what Daniel's number was last night at bed time. I looked at him with that wide-eyed stare/glare that's supposed to pin a person to the wall and said, "I WAS AT YOGA." Then checked the meters. There was no bedtime reading.

So today he is checking every few hours and correcting as necessary. I try not to be a nag, honestly.
But am I allowed to leave the house? Can I let him leave the house? Is this just teenage brain? Can I scream now and will you all understand?

Mommy Blues, Mommy Joy

It was hard to let Daniel go off to Boston this weekend, even though he was with his dad. I knew there would be time where the kids would be buddying up and off exploring. That's not anything new for him; he's done that on other field trips in the past -- before diabetes. Before celiac.

These teenage/high school years are tough on parents in so many ways. It is natural for our children to learn to care for themselves, and to break through the boundaries of comfort into a new, risky world. It is right for them to do this, to push away, to cause the little arguments that separate from the nest.

Really, it was only a couple of years ago that I did the same thing. No one kicked harder, screamed more, and fought against parental authority than I did. So I remember. I *know*.

Now I'm getting it back, aren't I? Not that Daniel is mean and nasty like I was; quite the contrary. We are so blessed to have an excellent relationship with him, an open, caring, communicative connection. I think that some of that is a by product of the diabetes diagnosis within the last year. We've had to rely on each other in a new, raw way that only served to strengthen our parent-child bond. I feel his needs now with the same intensity I felt when he was a newborn, the kind that mellows as children grow older and more independent. Fighting this disease brings out that early, ferocious motherlove. At the same time I see Daniel starting to slip through these bonds. Part of him holds on, I know, because he is learning a new way of life, and is thankful for the love and support Matt and I give him. But part of him is breaking away, as he should.

It's heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time to watch your child transform into an adult. You see it physically first, his arm and leg bones lengthening; his head changing shape, giving him a more focused, less wide-eyed look. Then there is a change in attitude. He's helping without asking, opening doors & carrying packages. He's discussing world events. He sees outside the bubble of his inner world. He connects with people who have sympathetic views of the world. He speaks easily with both younger kids and adults. He is thinking of who and what he will become. Yet he is still forgetful, leaving blood testing strips staining the kitchen table, and assignments for school sitting on the printer. He growls at his younger brother for touching his stuff. He is caught in between one age and the next.

So often we get wrapped up in our day to day routine. Get to school, get to work, pay the bills, worry about tomorrow. Spring break ends tonight, and the wheels will start spinning faster. I guess I just wanted to take a snapshot of this moment, before Daniel leaves childhood entirely, to appreciate him for his successes and his faults, for his bravery and his retreat. I hope I can let go gracefully, so that he will come back, fully grown, on his own to reconnect with his parents on a different, more complex level. Always in love, always in beauty.

Hide the Lettuce

The nutrition class we attended before Daniel was allowed to use the insulin pens was informative, but other than learning even more about counting carbs than we knew before, there wasn't much new information in there for us. I've really made an effort over the years to get my kids to eat a healthy diet. Fast food is a rare event, mainly if we are traveling long distances and it is the only available rest stop, or if there simply isn't time to put together some sort of meal at home and we have to get somewhere because of an activity.

But really, how often is it really impossible to put together food at home? It's true that before Daniel's diagnoses, I fell back on the store-cooked rotisserie chickens for a quick meal or a couple of dishes from the local Chinese restaurant. But I can't do that anymore because of the threat of gluten. 99% of our meals are now made from scratch.

I've been lucky with Daniel, though. He's always been a great eater. Except for a short time when he was 2 and lived for a couple of months on either pancakes or cream cheese & jam on crackers, he's had an adventurous palate. But one thing he hasn't fallen in love with are salads. Okay, it took me a while to fall in love with salad as well when I was a kid. I kind of took it one vegetable at a time. Cucumbers. Tomatoes. The palest, crunchiest, iceberg lettuce. I don't know how many years it took for me to start craving the darkest green types of lettuce, but once I headed down that road I never looked back.

The thing is, for a diabetic, it's a really good idea to like salads. Salads can fill you up without carbing you into sugar spike land. The vitamin & fiber benefits are obvious. So how can I teach Daniel to eat salad? There is only one way. Cover it with meat. And, of course, add a sprinkle of cheese.

I made Daniel a "taco meat salad" tonight (minus the actual taco part). Under the meat & cheese is a nice pile of mixed greens, cukes, tomatoes, peppers, & carrots. He ate the whole thing, with only minor complaints about the lettuce. My master plan is to slowly, over time, alter the meat&fat to lettuce ratio until there are more greens than meat. By then his taste buds will have gotten used to -- even looked forward to -- the healthy crunch.

That's my plan. I'll let you know how it works.

Red Sky in the Morning, Sailors Take Warning

Do you know that old rhyme?

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning
Red sky at night, sailors' delight.

That's what I learned when I was a kid. It had to do with the weather. If the sky was red in the morning, you could expect rain. If you had a red sunset, then fair weather was ahead.

We had a red sky this morning. Although the weather outside stayed clear through the day, we still had to take warning. Daniel woke up with a blood sugar of 458 today.

So I ask -- what the hell is "free food?" The nurses said that free food is carb free, and can be eaten without bolusing. Pickles! You can have all the pickles you want! Daniel was like, woo hoo pickles (as opposed to WOO HOO! PICKLES!). But meat... ahhhh, here we go. Meat. It's something he sinks his teeth into. It's carb free! It is a manly food! But take it one step closer to perfection -- add cheese. Meat and cheese! What could be better for my growing teenager? He just loves the stuff.

Yesterday was Valentine's day and instead of getting candy for each of the kids, I made heart shaped cheeseburgers. Dominic and Nora got some candy (I bought the bag of all green m&ms) and I made the gluten free brownies for a treat for Daniel. I sat down to my tofu and watched the kids devour red meat.

Nora had a cheeseburger. Dominic had 1 1/2. Daniel had 4. Yes, seriously. He had 2 at dinner with the buns, along with a few strawberries and his brownie. He bolused for this. Then, an hour after dinner, he was amazingly STILL HUNGRY. It's a curious thing, watching a teenager eat. Human vacuums. The food disappears at an alarming rate. So he started picking at cheese sticks, and then found the leftover burgers. He ate 2 without the buns.

He was already a bit high at bedtime, so he corrected AND ATE SOME MORE. He had 2 empanadas.

I know that growth spurts can cause teenagers to eat almost anything in their path. I also know that growth spurts can cause crazy blood sugar numbers. This morning, I had a grumpy, snappish, thirsty male with mild ketones and a crappy attitude. He didn't want to eat breakfast. I got an egg into him and kept him home for a little bit so I could see if his blood sugar was headed back down again. It was, so my husband took him to school and I called the nurse to give her a heads up. She called me at lunchtime to tell me his numbers were back at 89.

Later in the day he's back in the 200s, even with bolusing, correcting, and 30 minutes on the elliptical. It's definitely been a stormy day, diabetes-wise. I hope we can steer into smooth sailing soon!

Focus

Last night I participated in a focus group discussion for parents of children with diabetes. I met three other moms of diabetic kids there. One had 3 kids, two of whom, both girls (14 and 10 yrs. old), had diabetes. She had been dealing with the disease for almost 10 years. Another mom had a preteen son that was diagnosed 2 years ago, and she started a nonprofit organization to raise money for the ADA. The third mom’s son was just diagnosed a couple of months ago; however, her son is not taking insulin at this point. He is on a very strict diet. That didn’t sound like type 1 to me, but the term pre-diabetic was tossed around, so it could be that he will be starting on insulin soon.

We were all from different areas around town, had different backgrounds, and had differing stories of our intro to diabetes. And you know what? We could have talked all night. Diabetes is an instant ice breaker. I’ve always been the type of person who, when going into a room full of people I didn’t know, would not be very comfortable. But put me in a room with other moms of diabetics, and it’s hard to shut me up.

We all signed a form saying that we wouldn’t discuss what we talked about in the focus group. I did tell Daniel this morning, however, that afterwards the moms talked about how hard it can be to get their teenage kids to focus in on their diabetes care. Daniel surprised me by saying that his celiac bugs him more than the diabetes. He wishes he could just eat the things that he likes. But the diabetes is just, well, there. He manages it. It doesn’t really affect him. (This after he had the nasty grumpies because he was low this morning).

I said, “It doesn’t affect you? What about the high & low swings & your mood? What about the fact that there’s no cure for this disease (yet). What about dealing with the long term effects of diabetes?”

Daniel says that he’s doing everything he has to do to keep his blood sugar under control, which will allow him to stay healthy. Diabetes is really more annoying than anything else.

So I’m feeling a little crazy mixed up inside today. On the one hand, I want Daniel to be deadly serious about diabetes. Yes, he is doing everything he remembers to do so he can maintain good blood sugar levels, but honestly, if I didn’t remind him to test two hours after meals, or regularly on weekends, he would forget. He would miss his highs, which he doesn’t feel, and eventually they would affect him. I want him to consider D to be more than just an annoyance.

Yet I want Daniel to just be a kid. Not to be defined by diabetes. Not to have this constant timer & carb counter clicking in his head.

In the meantime, I guess he will be a little bit serious and a little bit annoyed. He is mostly in charge of his care, but I do all the meal planning & medicine ordering. I talk to the insurance company and discuss Daniel’s future with the endocrinologist. At some point Daniel will take over more and more from me, and as an adult will be fully in charge of his care.

Adult shoulders are built to carry more cares than teen shoulders. For now and the next however many years I will help Daniel as best I can with reminders, meals, carb counting, etc. etc. etc. When his shoulders are large enough and his spirit is willing, I’ll transfer what needs to be transferred. But not everything. Moms have the right to carry cares for their children no matter how old they get.