Y'all.... let me start by saying that from a Mom's standpoint - Type 1 Diabetes is scary. Like, super scary.
When Paige was first diagnosed, it felt like being thrown into a play, but you were only verbally told the lines you needed to repeat once. And then there are the times that weren't talked about - what do you do then??
We were given a great education while at the hospital, so please don't think that is the issue here. Its just when you're thrown in the deep end, no matter what you tell me or how many times, I'm just not going to retain all of the info in my lil brain... and a T1D diagnosis for your kid is exactly that - throwing ya in the deep end. Thank goodness for the big binder they sent us home with - it had dang near everything they went over with us. I called it the Diabetes Bible for a while :)
For literally 6 months (probably more), I felt like we had NO IDEA what we were doing, besides following the math. It was a scary time. There were plenty of sleepless nights while we figured out what we were doing and how things were going to work for us. But it seemed like after that, we could work it. We would start making it a guessing game as to which ratios the Endocrinologist's office would change when we faxed in our log sheets every week. We could get brave, doing a full correction at night instead of a half because she never dropped at night. We were still checking blood glucose levels every night at midnight and 3am.
All the time - we were making diabetes fit into our lives, not working our lives around diabetes. There wasn't anything we held Paige back from doing, including volleyball. (I will say that it was quite a while before we let her go to a sleepover - and then we had to teach the parents how to use the glucagon in case of an emergency. But Paige was 12 when she was diagnosed, so she was very self sufficient at that point - so she could handle the math and dosing, and we trusted that she was doing it correctly). I think you have to have some control over a disease that is very uncontrollable (that's why they say you MANAGE diabetes) and tell it how your family works, not hide from it.
The parts that used to freak me right out were: the fact that you have to be on 24/7, and there are no off days; the fact that if not managed properly, she could have issues that lead to amputation; the fact that she could slip into a coma in the middle of the night and I wouldn't know; the fact that you could do the same exact thing with the same exact foods two days in a row, and have vastly different numbers; the fact that you have to do ALL THE MATHS to figure out a dose for EACH meal with a liquid that can KILL your kid if you're not right.
I can't tell you how many tears I've shed, how many nights I lay awake because of these fears. And then one day I realized that I didn't have to.
I REFUSE.
I refuse to allow these fears to take over. I refuse to let them decide that I was going to worry endlessly. I refuse to let Type 1 Diabetes run us.
WE OWN YOU DIABETES.
So I let it go - gave all of my worries to God. I know of the scary bits still, but they don't scare me anymore. We are not going to make a mistake so severe that we can't correct it. We can't change the fact that she's got Type 1 Diabetes. We can only do our best and if there's weird numbers going on that we can't explain away, chalk it up to diabetes' craziness and hope it goes away tomorrow.
Please don't let the fear own you too.
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