Sharp

I really, really like the people who run the daycare that we send the kids to. They're sweet people who obviously care a great deal for the children.

But sometimes, they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Routine, everyday stuff doesn't get to them, much, but Penny's diabetes care stumps them. And I could understand that -- it's not something that can be reduced to simple routine, and it's not simple, and it took Matt and I months of day-in, day-out observation to even begin to really grasp, and it took us more than a year to get to the point where we feel comfortable making adjustments to the "calculated" insulin doses based on dozens of tiny factors and our gut feelings. And we still sometimes guess wrong. And the daycare people obviously have more than two kids to take care of.

But they want so much for us to be able to drop her off in the morning and not have to worry about her for the rest of the day that they sometimes hesitate to call us and ask questions. They don't want to bother us -- after all, we're paying them so we don't have to be interrupted every five minutes with questions. And I appreciate the sentiment, but in this case... they need to call us.

I only figured out last week that the reason Penny's been running so low at daycare is that after they treat her for a low (by giving her some extra milk or the candy we keep in her bag for the purpose), they're adding those carbs into her meal total and giving her insulin for them. Which negates the whole purpose of giving her extra carbs to bring her sugars up in the first place. (Also, they weren't writing it down when she had lows, or what they gave her, so I wasn't able to track that information for the doctor.) I think I've finally got them sorted out on that, now.

Some of them have trouble with the "rounding to the nearest half unit" bit, even though I made a chart for them to follow.

A couple of weeks ago, Matt picked Penny up from school to discover that the kids'd had cupcakes that afternoon... except for Penny. He blew his top. We'd very specifically told them to let Penny participate in everything, that we don't want her to ever have to feel excluded because of this. That if there was food involved they could call us and we'd tell them how many carbs it was so they could figure the insulin dose. He growled at the teacher who was there, and I spoke to the other teacher the next morning, and I think we've finally got them straight on that, too.

So earlier this week, when her class went on a field trip up to another branch of the school up in Richmond for a carnival or something, they told us we didn't need to pack a lunch for her that day -- that they'd let her have the hot dogs that they were grilling. Yes, okay! I got behind that. I stressed repeatedly that they should call if they had any questions or concerns. And sure enough, they called at lunchtime, to review what she was eating and to verify that they'd figured the carbs correctly, which they had.

And then they called back half an hour later. "She wants to participate in the doughnut-eating contest."

I nearly fell out of my chair.

Okay, yes, I'd wanted her to be able to participate in stuff, but forget the diabetes: who in the hell thought it was a good idea to have a bunch of five-to-ten-year-olds have a doughnut-eating contest???

Luckily, matters became clearer. It wasn't a contest of "how many can you eat", but some no-hands variant. Each kid would only get one doughnut. Whew. I looked up the carbs (though apparently no one present knew the difference between a yeast doughnut and a cake doughnut) and gave instructions and carried on with my day.

I'm hoping that, just maybe, we're starting to get the kinks worked out. But it'll be something of a relief to get her back to school in the fall, where there's at least a real nurse handling the math.