Diabetes Camp

I took Penny to diabetes camp this past weekend.

It's exhausting, but she obviously gets so much out of it that I can't imagine not doing it.

Last year, we left right after school, got caught in traffic, and nearly missed dinner. So this year, I signed her out of school before lunch. We met Matt for lunch, then went shopping for snacks, and then hit the road. So, naturally, we encountered absolutely no traffic and were there an hour before check-in was supposed to start.

We wound up in the same cabin as last time, and since we were first through the door, Penny got her pick of bunks... so she chose the exact same bunk as last year.

When I moved the car back to the parking area, Penny hopped out of the car and immediately -- and I mean immediately -- spotted a four-leafed clover. How cool is that? I pressed it in the little notebook I'd brought along.

When our cabin counselor/nurse showed up with the name list, it turned out that Penny's favorite friend from last year's camp was going to be in with us again -- she nearly lost her mind with joy, and spent the next two hours avidly watching the door, waiting for her to show up, which she finally did just before dinner. We also had some new kids arrive; Penny made friends with two of them right away. (The last one, being a couple of years younger than the other girls, was a little left out occasionally, unfortunately.)

Just like last year, there were games pitting the cabins against each other. Some of the games were really cute, like the giant slingshot with the live target:

...or the game of human Battleship:

I think the ODU students running the games weighted the scores for participant age, because our cabin won! That got us a stack of $5 gift certificates to use at the camp store (which, weirdly, was only open for two hours on Saturday -- from 10-11, and from 4-5).

There was, of course, a fire after the games. (This year, they got it started while the games were still going on, which was nice.) With s'mores. Penny asked me to roast her marshmallow for her. "I want it to be perfect, Mom!"

The next day, we went rock climbing right after breakfast. Penny was initially on board, but got bored waiting for her turn and gave up. (To be fair, the girls who were on the wall ahead of her were both very slow, and very determined to make it to the top.) Several of our cabin-mates, however, made it to the top to ring the bell. Multiple times, even!

Then we went fishing. Penny was very enthusiastic about it, but alas, caught nothing this year. We took a short break after the fishing to visit the camp store and spend our gift certificates, and then went to the leatherworking shop, where each girl got to make a keychain, and each adult got to nurse a killer headache from all the hammer pounding.

After lunch, we had a Q&A session with the attending doctors -- some of the kids asked some great, thoughtful questions. Penny, tasked with "stumping Doctor Marta", asked what the carb count was on honeysuckle nectar, which did, indeed, stump all the doctors and nurses and counselors present. Then the kids went back to their cabins to work on their skits for that night while the Q&A continued with the parents.

Our first activity of the afternoon was pony riding (next year, we'll get to do real horseback riding, I think), and then a hay ride.

The hay ride was about half an hour long, and at about the 25-minute mark, the skies opened up. We all got pretty drenched, between the last bit of the ride and then the run back to our cabin afterward. We voted to skip the second activity of the afternoon, which was canoeing. (I was just as happy about that. I don't have the arm strength to handle a paddle, even if my only passengers are a couple of eight-year-olds, and it was WAY too chilly to even contemplate a tumble into the river.)

So we worked on our skit for a while longer, and then the girls had a pillow fight that lasted until the moms realized that they were dropping their pillows on the muddy, filthy floor. (Next year, if I remember, I will bring a spare pillow case -- one for getting dirty, and one for sleeping on.)

One of the girls had a Flat Stanley with her, and her mom's phone camera wasn't working properly, so I took lots of pictures for her -- Flat Stanley in the bunk, Flat Stanley climbing the wall, Flat Stanley fishing, Flat Stanley riding a pony... I love the Flat Stanley project, I really do.

For their skit, the girls sang along with Weird Al's "Pancreas", and when they said the word "pancreas", they turned around and pointed to all us parents, who were sitting behind them on the stage, holding their diabetes supplies. (To indicate that we're doing this job that the pancreas should be doing for them.) We had fun making it crazy (the adults popped to our feet and did our best jazz-hands, and on the line "metabolizing those carbohydrates," one girl held up a big gingerbread stuffie, and her dad snatched it and pretended to eat it). At any rate, we got a big giggle out of the whole thing, which was pretty much the whole point.

And of course, there was ice cream after that, and then we had the fun of trying to get a cabin-full of little, sugar-wired girls to settle down and go to sleep.

We were all sad to leave the next morning -- well, the girls were, at any rate. The adults were all looking forward to clean bathrooms and proper showers and sleeping in our own beds!

Easter'd

Hooray for days off and friends and family and fun!

As it turned out, at the last possible moment, I got to take Friday off altogether. So I drove Penny down to Chesapeake for a sleepover -- I got to hang out with KT for a couple of hours and chat, and we had lunch together, and I got to see the condo they're about to buy before I came back up -- and in the meantime, Matt and Adin went to Busch Gardens, where they got to ride all the rides. All the roller coasters that Matt's had to walk wistfully past because he's been with me (I hate roller coasters) or Penny (who loves roller coasters but has height restrictions), he got to ride with Adin. They had a fantastic time, despite it being just a touch chilly.

I met them there around 2, by which time they'd pretty much done all the rides. I wanted to do Dark Kastle -- they'd already done it, but I wasn't going to name any rides they hadn't already done -- so we went over and did it. We wound up in a car with a trio of pre-teen (or maybe early teen) girls behind us. The girls started screaming the instant our car moved, and right at first, I thought that was going to be annoying, but it actually turned out to be awesome, in fact, adding an element of verve to the ride. As we dismounted, we joked about just following them to whatever they were doing next.

But by that point, the park was getting stupidly crowded and all the lines were crazy long. We got in line for another ride, but just before we got to it, the ride broke. And we were watching the clock to make sure we weren't late picking up the kids, so we got some snacks and meandered slowly and happily back home. (When it's my turn to spend a full day at the park without the kids, I want to do all the shows.)

Since Penny was off at her sleepover, we were free of our usual carb/dessert restraints for dinner, so we had pizza (real pizza, from Papa John's, which I have missed a lot) and Coldstone, and then we got to hang out with Adin (and Braz, once he got back from his trip) until it was time to go home.

Saturday was very busy: I boiled eggs, did the week's grocery shopping so I wouldn't have to do it on Easter morning, and then made peas with pearl onions for Easter dinner and a lemon chess pie for Easter dessert. While Alex was napping and Matt and Penny were off at the library, I put the kids' Easter baskets together.

After Alex woke up, the kids dyed eggs and had a great time doing it.

When that was done, we took the kids over to the Hedge, ate a quick dinner, and then Matt and I went out for a little date night -- we went to see A Separation at the DoG Street theater. As a note, the descriptions of the movie that we'd seen makes it sound like the movie's pivot/plot points turn on the couple's decision whether to leave the country and/or whether to get divorced; in fact, those decisions are made in the first ten minutes of the film, and the rest of it hinges on what falls out because of it. It was still very good, just not the movie we thought we were getting.

Another note: DEPRESSING. I mean, we knew it was a movie about living in Iran, and that it was going to be depressing. But the only -- and I mean only, entirely free of hyperbole -- happy moment in the movie is a brief scene that exists, I'm fairly certain, solely so it can drop you off the highest possible cliff when the next moment of horror strikes.

When the movie was done, we walked across DoG Street to the Trellis for dessert. Which only made me want to have dessert at the Trellis more often, because they had four or five things I really wanted to try.

Then we went back to the Hedge and cheered ourselves up by hanging with Braz and Adin and playing Cards Against Humanity.

We were up early on Easter, of course, because the kids knew the baskets were waiting... They had fun with them, and didn't even whine too much when I told them they'd have to wait until at least 9 before I'd go hide eggs outside for them. We went over to my parents' more or less immediately after lunch, where they hunted more eggs, and then we had an early dinner.

(I'll have Easter pictures later; I'm still sorting them.)

You'd think that a holiday devoted to chocolate and candy (well, okay, it is at our house) would be a nightmare for parents of a diabetic kid, and you'd probably be right, except not this time. We let her have a measured amount of candy at every meal (though for two of those meals, she deliberately chose to have less candy than we were allowing, because she's very much in the "but if I eat it, then I won't have it" camp when it comes to chocolate), and while she coasted on the high side of her range for most of the day, she did, in fact, only have one officially high blood sugar, and no lows. Which is a better record than she's had for most of the last month, to be honest, so we were both pleased and astonished. (Not enough to let her have candy more often, though, which I think was her secret wish.)

We got home around 5, and I was just about ready to go to bed right away, except that Jenn and Brian came down to deliver the new shelves/entertainment unit that Brian had built for us. It looks great, though we still need to sand and stain it before we put it in its final resting place. Which means I need to get my hands on a sander (I'm tempted to just buy one), and run to the hardware store for some brushes, a dropcloth, and a tarp to cover it so it can dry overnight without dew forming on it. (There's my project for this coming weekend, I guess.) Anyway, Jenn and Brian stayed until around 10 or so. By the time they left, I was ready to completely fall over from exhaustion, which is why I've still only got egg-dying pictures and not Easter Day pictures posted.

I've been ignoring my camera too much lately, though -- I wound up taking tons of pictures that were either way too light or way too dark because I'd forgotten to check the settings before I started snapping. Sigh. Well, now that the weather is getting nice, maybe I'll remember to grab the camera more often.

Five Things Make A Post

1. I'm about 4/5 of the way through the speed-edit I've been trying to push through this week, which means I'm pretty much right on schedule. Go, me!

2. I'm only about 1/5 of the way through the enormous stack of paperwork on my desk at the Day Job, though, which has me a bit behind schedule there. Boo.

3. Assumption of Desire was on an Amazon Top 100 list again this morning! This time, I got a screen capture before it fell off again. (I put the picture up on my Facebook author page.)

4. Alex came in and snuggled with us this morning when my alarm went off, which he hasn't done for a while. Even though he was squirmy and talky and refused to let me go back to sleep for another five minutes, I was glad for it. I've been thinking too much lately about how, entirely too soon, my boy will decide it's undignified to cuddle with his mom.

5. Got all our paperwork appropriately signed and notarized and such for Diabetes Camp at the end of April, and it should be going out with today's mail. So we're all set for that. I need to remember to go on the calendar at work as taking the next day off, because I'm not going to be getting a lot of sleep that weekend. And to
buy a sleeping bag, because struggling with sheets last year was stupidly frustrating.

Too Long

It's been too long since I last wrote. Sorry about that, gang.

Proposals suck in my brain and make me incapable of life function, it seems sometimes. And the Daylight Savings switch happened this past weekend, so my brain is still refusing to function in line with that, too. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for about three days.

Things are starting to come together with the proposal now, though -- we're still editing, but all the sections have been written and vetted and approved as compliant. It's just a question now of squeezing out the unnecessary stuff so we can fit it all in under the mandated page-count. (This is where college turns out to have been useful -- all that time spent playing with the formatting on my papers so they would fit the pagecount requirement has, it turns out, given me valuable skills.)

***

Penny's diabetes has been kicking our asses lately. Saturday night, she accidentally got Humalog instead of Lantus at bedtime, which meant Matt stayed up until after 1 AM checking her sugars and chasing a viciously persistent low... and then we spent all day Sunday correcting the high from lack of basal insulin. To make matters worse, she went to a friend's birthday party Sunday afternoon and had not only cake, but pizza, that bane of diabetics everywhere.

So when the school nurse called me at lunch yesterday to tell me she was crazy high, I wasn't that surprised... but when the nurse told me she was also showing moderate ketones, I freaked out. Spilling ketones is bad. We're supposed to call the endocrinologist's emergency number when she's at moderate or higher levels. But, pizza, I thought, and told the nurse to correct generously and recheck her in two hours to make sure it was taking hold.

I spent the next two hours on pins and needles. Was I going to have to leave work early to pick my daughter up from school and take her to the hospital?

When the nurse called back, the bad news was that her sugars were pretty much the same as before. Though Penny reacts to Humalog pretty late in its 4-hour window, and she'd eaten lunch in there, so for her to have remained at a stable level wasn't that bad. But the good news was that she was back to being negative for ketones. No emergency calls or hospital trips for us. Whew.

Once I'd started to calm down, I realized: I don't think she ever got her shot for breakfast. Like, at all. I'd started to do the math, but whe'd been waffling over what kind of yogurt she wanted, so I'd walked away to do something else while she finished deciding, and I think I got distracted and never went back to it. Mea culpa. I won't even get into how that made me feel about myself; you can probably put a solid guess together.

She was back into normal range by dinner, and even had a mild low when Matt checked her at 10. (Not a scary one, just a "hey, have a little milk" one.) And this morning she was right where we like to see her. So hopefully that episode is done with.

***

Back to work. The proposal doesn't go out until Friday, which means I won't be done with it until Friday. But I'm totally taking Friday afternoon -- and probably Monday -- off, as well.

Struggle

I'm struggling with apathy. Again.

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday of the year. I looked forward to it all year long, dragged out the decorations as soon as Thanksgiving had arrived, and buried myself in the planning and activities with joyous enthusiasm. I loved it all.

This year... I'm not feeling it. There's no excitement to balance out the schedule crunch; there's no delight to make the petty frustrations all worthwhile; there's no thrill to offset the whining. I'm not captivated by the lights or teary-eyed at the music or warmed by the acts of charity. I just. Don't. Care.

Don't care if the house is decorated. Don't care if the presents are all wrapped and under the tree. Don't care if we've got a present for everyone on our list. Don't care if we make it to all the events. Don't care if we see all the specials, read all the books, bake all the cookies, open all the advent doors.

But it's not just Christmas. It's everything. I don't care if I get my work done on time... or at all. Don't care if the bills get paid. Don't care if I finish the story I'm writing. Don't care if I participate in the promotional stuff. Don't care if there's dinner on the table. Don't care if the kids are bathed, don't care if I get a shower.

Don't know why. Am I just tired? Burned out on stress? Midlife crisis? Lack of introvert recharge time? Late-breaking cynicism onset? I don't know. Don't much care about that, either. All I know is that everything's gone grey on me again.

I'm trying to pretend it's all in color. For the kids' sakes, and Matt's, and everyone else. I'm doing my work (mostly on time) and making dinner and taking showers and making lunches and going to the gym. I put up the decorations and I'm lighting the candles and making the treats and opening the doors and listening to the music. Doing the shopping and making the plans and wrapping the presents and playing the games. Taking the pictures and making the cards and struggling with the technical issues.

It's going to blow over, eventually, and when it does, I'll want to know that I didn't screw up anyone else's holidays too badly. So I'm making the effort. As much as I can. But it's a struggle, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep it up all the way through the end of the month.

***

(I lied. It's not all grey. Alex has been eating oddly and complaining of thirst a lot lately and so for a few days there, the grey was tinged with terror, until I finally gave in and tested his blood sugar one morning before he'd eaten. It came up at 81. He's fine. I admit that returning to the grey after that was something of a relief.)

Runaround

What an insanely busy weekend! And yet, loads of fun!

Let's see. Friday night, we took the kids out to see The Muppets. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was a fitting homage to Henson and Oz and the original Muppets. The kids enjoyed it, though Alex was about to turn into a pumpkin on us by the time it ended.

Saturday morning we got up and got dressed right away and headed into town to watch the Christmas parade. Alex found it alternately boring and too loud, but Penny loved it -- her favorite parts were the middle school and high school bands.

Waiting for the parade

When that ended at 10:30, we walked a few blocks up the street and had an early lunch at Wasabi. (They were nice enough to let us in even though they were still setting up and weren't officially open until 11. They got drinks for us and we were grateful just to sit down until they were ready for us.)

After lunch, we got Alex down for a nap and then I ran up to the store for supplies for the moon cookie party, which started around 1:30 or so. It was a smaller group than usual this year (I can't believe KT and Kevin would rather go to Disney World for a week than come to the moon cookie party!) but we had a great time making cookies and chatting. Though for the record, I seriously need to get some more cookie sheets, next year. Waiting on cookies to bake is a huge hold-up!

When that was done, we all went out to eat at La Tolteca, where Adin's sister met up with us, and then we trooped over to Braz and Adin's to put the kids to bed and have a seven-player game of Cards Against Humanity. (Adin's sister is sweet and giggly and precious, and also? has an incredibly filthy mind. I approve. A lot.)

Sunday morning, Matt threatened the kids with mayhem so that I could sleep in until almost 9. Then we got everyone dressed in their new Christmas clothes (or in Matt's and my cases, our old Christmas clothes) and we went down to New Town to visit Santa and take pictures. They had a different guy playing Santa this year, but he was nearly as good with the kids. A new thing they've got going this year is that if there isn't a line (which there wasn't, for us -- I can never quite believe it) Santa would read a story to the kids. Which was pure awesome.

Santa and Penny peruse her list

Santa reading to the kids

After our visit with Santa, we went out for lunch at Ruby Tuesday, then went home so Alex could crash into a nap. While he was out, Penny and I wrapped a bunch of Christmas presents and put them under the tree (Alex woke up in time to help with the last few) and then we all piled in the car and went to Busch Gardens to see Christmastown, which I have missed for the last few years and was determined to see this time.

I have to say, I loved it. And the weather was perfect -- brisk enough to add to the "winter wonderland" atmosphere without being so cold that it was unpleasant to be outdoors. I do sort of wish that Matt and I could go back without the kids, because it would be nice to a) sample some of the tasty treats without having to worry about the diabetic in tow, b) stay at the park later than Alex's bedtime, and c) stroll along and look at everything at our own pace, without having to deal with assorted whines about being bored/hungry/tired and wanting to go right now to the favorite show or ride.

After all that standing and walking and picture-taking, my back and hips are killing me today, but it was totally worth it. I got lots of fun pictures to use for our Christmas cards and the calendar for next year, and the kids had a great time, even if they were both getting a little tired and out of sorts by the end of it. (I can relate, as I was getting a little tired and out of sorts as well...)

I'm hoping to recover some of my aplomb this week -- there's not much happening at work until Thursday, and I've got 7 hours of what my office calls discretionary/holiday time (I'd been saving it all year for the day after Thanksgiving, but wound up working most of that day, so I still have it left over) that I have to use-or-lose by the 16th. So I'm looking at taking some extra time off -- either two half-days or one full day -- to wrap up my Christmas shopping and work on my writing and generally try to relax and recoup my holiday spirit, which has been badly frazzled by my perception of the schedule, this year.

Intervention

I had a dream last night. I was walking in the woods with some friends, and realized that Penny wasn't with us. We called, and fanned out to look for her, and I found her in a bed of leaves, unconscious. She didn't rouse, so I tested her blood sugar: 20. "I'll need the Glucagon," I said to whoever was standing behind me. "The big red box in her bag." In the dream, I was very calm. I explained to the person with me (it wasn't Matt, because he wouldn't need the explanation, having heard it before) that Penny was probably going to throw up when she woke up, and that as soon as I'd given her the shot, I would call 911 for an ambulance.

I woke up before I actually gave her the shot, much less calm than I had been in the dream. It was around 2:30 in the morning.

It was only a dream, I told myself. I got up and went into Penny's room. She stirred when I touched her arm. I didn't want to disturb her, so I kissed her cheek, then went to check on Alex (who was sleeping on his back with his hands tucked behind his head and his ankles crossed in the classic "lounging on summer grass" pose -- I had to giggle!) and then started to go back to bed. But as I sat down, I thought... it wouldn't hurt to actually check Penny's blood sugar. Just to be sure.

She'd been 138 when Matt checked her at 10:00 -- solidly in range. But except for Sunday evening and yesterday morning, when she was apparently fighting off the aftereffects of movie theater popcorn, she's been having a lot of lows lately. It was worth a check.

I had to fight her to get her hand out from under the blanket, but I finally got the drop of blood on the test strip... 54.

Crap.

I brought her a juice box, and by the time I'd got the wrapper off the straw, she was sitting up and ready for it. She sucked it down and then collapsed back into her nest of blankets.

I re-checked her fifteen minutes later, now approaching 3 am. She was at 108, a good solid number. I went back to bed, though it took me almost an hour to relax back into sleep.

This morning, when she checked her sugars before breakfast, she was at 58.

WTF, diabetes? WTF?

And what if I hadn't had that dream? Would she have bottomed out in the 50's anyway? Or continued her nosedive? Would we have woken this morning and realized Penny hadn't turned her alarm off, and had to scramble for the Glucagon for real?

It's almost enough to make me wonder if there's a higher power.

***

But lest we let diabetes take the upper hand and set the tone for the day, let me share something awesome with you instead. Penny's studying maps in school right now, and her big project, due today, was to make up her own map of a place, and write a paragraph to go with it. With help, she decided to map an island, and she filled it in, and then we thought about underwater movies we'd seen to help us add features to the surrounding ocean -- she put in caves and volcanoes and even a minefield (a la Finding Nemo). The map itself was very creative and imaginative, and I was pleased.

And then she wrote the paragraph to go with it. Matt swears she wrote this all at once, without a lot of pausing for thought (presented exactly as she wrote it, with our spelling corrections in brackets):

This Island is my secret hideout where my friends hang out. We also go on quests but of course we have to leave mine filds [fields] around our island to sink and stop our enmy's [enemies'] ships. We explore the water volcanos [volcanoes] to see what and when they explode. If our enmys [enemies] are near we hide in the caves. Also we find treasure on our island! If it's hot we run in the forest to cool off. My island is a safe place you can go. (Exept [Except] for the pirats [pirates].) And have fun!

When she read that to me, I just about fell over, I was so proud and happy and excited. How awesome is that?! The "(except for the pirates)" bit killed me! (The parentheses were her idea, even.) Volcanoes and treasure and minefields and pirates and sunken ships and forests and caves, and she managed to link it all together cohesively! Obviously, she's a born storyteller. Or possibly ready to start building her own D&D modules.

Either way... That's my girl.

Wait, What?

There was a weekend, right?

I got up this morning and literally could not remember what I'd done on Saturday. At all. I wasn't sure the day had even happened until Matt jogged my memory: "You went to KT's thing."

Oh, right. KT threw a thirty-one show. And it's weird that I forgot it, because I've been looking forward to it. Because I bought way too many things at it. Because I signed up to host a show, myself, come spring (when hopefully the available patterns will be a little less... brown.)

And after that, I went over to Braz and Adin's to find my kids, and it looked for a while like I was going to leave both of them there overnight, but Penny only had 2 glucose test strips left in her kit, and Alex started whining at about 9 that he wanted to go home, so... we went home. (Good thing, too, because Penny had a persistent low blood sugar that kept me up until after midnight, and then Matt stayed up until nearly 2am trying to keep her in range.)

Sunday we met up with them again to take in Happy Feet Two, which turned out to be pretty good, though I'm distinctly disturbed that Mumble is still sporting his chick-feathers like he was at the end of the first movie. But it was funny (oh my goodness, the krill puns! I want a whole movie now that's just Bill and Will!) and the music adaptions were fun, and it kept the kids pretty well entertained.

This week promises to be nice and slow -- not too much to do at work, and I've got all my ingredients in place for the cooking/eating frenzy of Wednesday evening and Thursday. I do need to remember to put the Macy's parade on the TiVo so I can jump the commercials, and get Karen's birthday package to the post poffice. I'm technically working on Friday, but I don't think anyone else is, so I'm planning to work from home and probably just check email every so often to make sure nothing is happening.

So things will be quiet here. Some thankful contemplation, perhaps.

But hey! If you take digital pictures at all, go check out the contest I have running for free digital scrapbooking software! They're releasing the new version of the software next week, and the contest winner will get the new version, which fixes quite a few of my quibbles from the review, so for petesake enter the contest! Right now!

Buggy

I know I don't usually post here on Writing Wednesday, but last night was pretty rough.

Penny had a persistent low at school and was complaining of a stomachache, so Matt brought her home early. The persistent low continued to persist, and Matt was feeling a bit under the weather as well, so instead of the planned dinner, I just made a couple of frozen pizzas. Penny ate three slices, I calculated the insulin, and we went on with the evening...

Right up until I sat down to read to Penny at bedtime. I got through exactly one sentence and then she jumped up, ran into the bathroom, and proceeded to puke her little guts up.

Here's a fun quiz: when you give someone insulin, but then they throw up all the food in their stomach before it can be digested, what happens? That's right! Low blood sugar! Whoo!

(In fact, I'm thinking that might have been the cause of that persistent low of the afternoon -- if the stomach bug was already beginning, it probably drastically slowed the rate of digestion, which meant her lunch insulin was going through her much faster than her food was.)

She was well within her range at bedtime, so Matt and I went about our evening routine, but alas, she thew up again around 9, and when Matt checked her blood sugar at 10, she was under 40 -- so low that she was groggy and unable to sit up on her own when Matt woke her up to treat it. So we skipped the candy remedies (that would probably only upset her stomach anyway) and went straight for a big old spoonful of honey. Half of it smeared on her face, but she opened her mouth for me to spoon it in, so we got a good teaspoon in her and waited.

Fifteen minutes later, she was up a bit but still in the 40s, so we woke her up again. This time, at least, she came alert relatively quickly and sat up on her own to eat another spoonful of honey, and washed it down with half a bottle of Gatorade, and then she remained upright until I'd gotten a washcloth to clean her face.

Another fifteen minutes or so, and she was up over 80, so we relaxed a bit. Matt and I stayed up another half hour or so and checked her again (over 100) before we went to bed.

This morning, her blood sugar was over 300, but rather than the usual frustration that causes me, I was relieved. (And unlike the "where the hell did that come from? highs, I knew exactly where this one came from: two spoonfuls of honey and half a bottle of Gatorade, duh!) The dangers of high blood sugar are slight but cumulative; low blood sugars are much more immediately terrifying. I hate it when she's so low she has trouble waking up. We have not yet ever had to break out the emergency Glucagon injection, and I do not ever want to. I probably don't even have to tell you what the Mutant Worrybrain was whispering when I first woke up this morning, do I?

She was feeling somewhat better on the stomach front, too -- she said her stomach didn't hurt any more, but she was Not Hungry. She ate a little cup of yogurt and drank some low-carb juice (I thought she should avoid milk) and I gave her a shot to bring her back down into range. She's staying home with Matt today, so here's hoping they're both feeling better by this evening.

Heatwave

We spent a goodly chunk of the weekend helping Braz and Adin move into their new place. Or more precisely, Matt helped them move stuff, and I kept an eye on all the kids so they wouldn't be underfoot. The house is fantastic; I totally have house envy, now. Penny and Alex agree; Penny spent the weekend raving about how awesome the house is, and every time Alex turned around, he was demanding to know when we were going to go visit "the new house".

It was a bad weekend for moving, though. The weather has been not just hot lately, but stupidhot, with highs in the upper 90s and heat indexes well over 105.

***

I didn't get a single lick of writing done, but I did manage to do some administrative/publicity stuff done. And one of my favorite authors mentioned on the mailing list that she'd read Safe Harbor and loved it and (teasingly) demanded to know when there would be sequels. Which made me squeal like a little girl with excitement. And also to start trying to think more seriously about the few sequel ideas I'd had!

***

There was a huge storm last night that passed right over top of us; the thunder crashed so hard that it kept setting off Penny's little bedroom doorbell from the vibrations in the walls. And then, hours after it had finally passed and we were asleep, the power went out. I know because at about 1:30, the smoke detectors started chirping at me about their low batteries. I stumbled downstairs and found my cell phone and used it as a flashlight to find the power bill and call the customer service number so I could report the outage. That done, I went back to bed and tried to sleep, but my brain wouldn't shut up. I finally dozed off and woke back up around 3, when the power came back on. I'm a little groggy this morning.

***

Lest there be any doubt whatsoever about Penny's feeling for our Cancun trip -- I offered last night to show her a few pictures from my previous trip, because I'd been trying to describe the resort and the beach to her, and words just weren't cutting it. Now, I know looking at someone else's vacation pictures can be pretty danged tedious, so I really planned to just show her a handful of pictures so she could have a mental image to work from -- but I'll be damned if she wasn't completely fascinated. She sat with me while I scrolled through each of something like 300 photos, asking questions and exclaiming with excitement.

Eighteen days and counting.

***

Her blood sugar leveled off over the weekend, too. After running high for most of the last month and us having to fight tooth and nail to get her back down into range any time we ate out -- we ate out three times this weekend, and she only had one high blood sugar, which was probably the result of my underestimating the carbs. It was fantastic, and her mood was noticeably improved, too.

Warm Break

In the category of things that are both heart-warming and heart-breaking, Penny and I had this conversation a couple of days ago:

"Mom? Remember when I got diabetes?"

"Yes, I remember. What about it?"

"When that happened, I thought I was the only one! I didn't know any other kids who had it!"

"That's true."

"And camp was so awesome because all the kids had it!"

She's talking about the weekend family camp we went to at the very end of April, more than two and a half months ago. And it was completely out of the blue. We hadn't been talking about camp before that, or even about diabetes, that I recall.

It's hard, sometimes, to really keep in mind that she's not quite eight years old. It's hard to remember what it was like, being eight, but if I really stop and think about it, think hard, I can remember pondering and processing and considering things for months and months like this. I can remember having blinding realizations weeks and months and even years after the events that prompted them. Penny still doesn't grok what diabetes means for her, down the road -- Matt and I are deliberately withholding some of the more gruesome possibilities, because she's not old enough to deal with that kind of fear. But we don't always comprehend that she's still working on processing what she does know. It took her a couple of weeks to get from the camp's "give yourself a shot" class to actually being ready to give herself shots. How much more processing would it take, then, to encompass something so much bigger as sharing this disease with other kids -- and not just a few kids, but a lot of them? It's huge, and it's beautiful, and I'm profoundly grateful once again that she had that experience and that she continues to remember it as something wondrous and wonderful.

On the flip side, I can remember, all too easily, feeling left out at school because there was something that set me apart from the other kids. I didn't even know what it was, because no one talked about "introversion" in the '70s. Penny has several good friends at school and seems generally well-accepted by most of her classmates. She has a few good friends at daycare. She's much less introverted than I was, much more socially stable, so it's hard for us to remember that being "different" is a terrible social burden for kids, and that even the ones who seem popular and well-adjusted may be feeling stressed about the inability to conform. These little conversations, random as they seem, reveal a little bit of that stress in her. I don't think it's a terrible pressure yet, but it is absolutely something I need to try to keep in mind, because it's going to inform a lot of the next decade or so. We may even need to try to make some extra allowances on the "fitting in" front, in order to make up for what diabetes takes away. And we'll keep going to camp, too, because it's going to be very important that once in a while, even if only for a few days a year, she be can be with people who really understand what she lives with, in a way that Matt and I never will. Somewhere she can check her blood sugar and give herself shots without feeling judged or self-conscious.

That she had a fantastic, positive experience at that camp -- that she had a fun time and made friends and still remembers it as a blur of giggling and silliness and excitement -- fills me with joy and makes it worth every little frustration and lost hour of sleep I suffered.

That she needed that experience, that something in her subconscious had apparently been desperately craving the company of true peers... can only make me ache.

Planning Ahead

In which I very carefully click on the correct blog-posting link, so that I don't post my morning babble to my authorial website that hasn't been announced because it's still kind of in development. You know, like I did yesterday, after which I sort of rolled my eyes at a friend who asked if I was going to post anything today, because I'd just posted. You know. To the wrong blog. That she didn't know about. *bonks self on head*

I ordered birthday presents for Penny yesterday, so we're pretty much good to go there. I'd been considering buying her an inexpensive digital camera to take along to Cancun, but the problem I kept running into while shopping was... well, in a nutshell: you get what you pay for. Every camera I looked at had some combination of problems in their reviews -- short battery life, no swappable memory cards, shoddy construction, crappy flash...

I finally decided that, since I'm going to be taking the old iPhone along so she can watch movies and play games anyway, she can use the camera on that. Granted, the iPhone has some of the same problems (no swappable memory and no flash, namely) -- but we already own that. And I'll be bringing the recharge cable for it anyway, and the resort has free wifi now, so if she fills it up, I can just mail pictures home and then delete them. And that's one less gadget to tote along, so that's a bonus, too.

(We might, however, splurge on a single-use underwater camera and take silly pictures of ourselves in the pool and/or ocean.)

I really should start planning our packing. What to take, how much gear to pack, what goes in the checked bag and what goes in carryon, diabetes supplies...

(Any of my D readers done a big vacation before? How many extra strips/syringes should I bring, given that we'll be partying it up and probably eating significantly less healthily than usual? I'm guessing at least 1-2 extra shots a day to keep up with the food, and 2-3 extra BG checks a day to stay ahead of lows caused by more activity than usual. Most of it will go in carryon, of course, but I want at least 3 days' supplies in carryon in case our luggage gets lost. We've flown domestically with her supplies before, but never left the country -- anyone ever have trouble with that?)

Penny and I worked it out in the car this morning: 23 days remaining until her birthday, and 24 until we head for Cancun. Let the countdown begin!

Sum Up

Weird work situation, mostly good weekend, lots to do, so here's the summary:

I've been sucked into a proposal at work. I'd be stressing over it more except that it's only 30 pages long and we don't have a lot of time to burn on it anyway.

I'll stress a little more this week, though, since I've got two software deliveries in hand and two more on the horizon. The proposal has to be finished by Wednesday night, though, so there's a hard limit on how long I can wrestle with it.

The summer bash was awesome. The weather could've been a smidge cooler, and it would've been nice if all the kids from the other big group at the park hadn't decided to make free with our toys, but we did eventually get them all back, and only one was broken beyond repair (and that one was a water gun over 10 years old, so I have trouble blaming that solely on the kids' roughness). But I got to visit with people I don't get to see very often, and Penny got to make a new friend, and we all talked ourselves hoarse and ate tasty food (mmm, Matt's stuffed brownies...). I had a fantastic long chat with T Campbell about the vagaries of publishing, and we both enjoyed talking with JD about a book (or series, possibly) that he wants to write. I visited with Ashby and Karen and Jeff (and watched Jeff let the kids hack at him with nerf swords) and met a bunch of new people (and re-met some people I've only encountered once or twice before) and also hung out with friends that I see more often, like Elizabeth and Dave and KT and Kevin.

We got plenty of "grownup time", too, for a change, which was nice. The girls were obviously big enough to run around on their own, and once he arrived, Alex was confident enough to go over to the adjacent playgrounds without an accompanying parent for a good half an hour at a time -- it meant that Matt and I would look up every ten minutes or so to do a child count, but that's certainly less disruptive to conversation than having to stand on the playground watching the kids. Alex hauled us over to the playground a couple of times to push him on the swings, but other than that, he climbed and slid and jumped more or less on his own.

I took a mess of pictures, of course. I'm looking forward to seeing some others, too.

The only real low point for the weekend was that Penny didn't get a lot of sleep, so by Sunday she was downright surly. Combined with my back and feet hurting from all the standing I did Saturday, that dragged my mood down a bit, too. She slept in a little this morning, though, and her mood seems to have improved.

Oh, and the "barrier" infusion set went well enough, though the needle freaked her out a little. We took it off this morning (made it the full three days this time, at least!) and I didn't see any of the swelling and redness that had come with the first set, but she swears the itching was making her crazy yet again. I don't know what to do about it, I really don't. I don't want to drop that much money on something and just hope that she'll "get used to it" with time. Argh.

Barrier

I called the Diabetes Center to ask about Penny's reaction to the infusion set; the answer I got was that they have several kids on pumps who are allergic to the set adhesive. What they do is provide a barrier between the adhesive and the set, and then use a different kind of tape (that's hopefully less reactive) to hold it in place.

Which is just that much more random stuff that has to be purchased to do this, whee. Guess we'll be padding the insurance's flexible spending account next year to cover those supplies.

The counselor I talked to said we could go ahead and start the paperwork to order our pump if we wanted, and they'd teach us how to place the barrier and stuff in that first training session. We've got a month to return the pump after we receive it in the unlikely event the barrier thing doesn't work either, though our schedule becomes slimmer since the Diabetes Center people are only at the office near us about once every three weeks, so we have to either wait for that or take her down to Norfolk again.

I asked if we could do a trial run of a set with the barrier in place first, and they were amenable to that, though again -- they're not in the office near us very often. I went ahead and made an appointment to take her in to do that, and told them we'd call if we decided to either take her down to Norfolk for it or go ahead and order the pump.

So that's that. I'll let you all know when progress is made...

Child Updates

We went to the insulin pump class on Thursday  night, and we looked at all three of the pumps that Penny's doctor recommends, and listened to the information session, and learned quite a bit. Penny and I both got trial infusion sets put in our stomachs (with bright pink connectors for our tubing!) and we talked to the company reps and the nurse who ran the session and generally filled up on information. (Alex, by the way, was really fantastic. He was a little wiggly, but happy enough to play with "his" iPhone during the presentation so Matt and I could listen, and he was more enthusiastic about going to look at the pumps than Penny was, for whatever reason.)

Matt and I eliminated OmniPod as a candidate fairly quickly -- the technology was cool, but using it was going to result in wasting a lot of insulin (you have to put a minimum of 80 units in the pod when you activate it, a pod is only good for 3 days, and Penny usually uses less than 15 units a day. Even if you allow for us stretching it to 4 days, we'd still be throwing away more than a day's worth of insulin every time we changed it out). There are some other factors as well -- like having a fairly large plastic bump attached to your body. I could see a teenager or adult being able to disguise the pod reasonably, but the pod looked huge next to Penny.

So we were left with the Animas Ping and the Medtronic MiniMed as our candidates. Both of them had some great features (the Animas is waterproof and has a foolproof device for set insertion, while the MiniMed can be integrated with CGM sensors and makes hundreds of skins for customization). So Matt and I spent some time Thursday night and Friday reading brochures and hitting up Google for reviews and answers to questions, and I think we're about 90% settled on the MiniMed.

By Saturday morning, Penny was complaining about her infusion set itching, but it didn't last long. We went over to Adin's after Alex's nap to join them in the pool for a couple of hours, then had hot dogs for dinner.

Sunday morning, as I was adjusting my jeans, my thumb caught on the edge of my infusion set and pulled it right off, even though we were "supposed" to leave them on until that evening. I guessed the chlorine had affected the adhesive's ability to stick. When I told Penny, she showed me her set, and it was mostly pulled free, as well -- the cannula (the tubing that rests under the skin) had been pulled free, and the rest of the set was hanging by some of the adhesive.

"I'm sorry," she told me. "It just itched so much, and I scratched it..." When I pulled the set the rest of the way off, there was a large patch of bumpy red skin, exactly where the set had been attached. (In the picture, the little red dot is where the cannula had been, and then there's red bumpy rash above and below.)

Which means she's either allergic to the adhesive, or at least has a sensitivity to it. It shouldn't be too surprising; I've had bad reactions to long-term adhesives in the past (though I didn't have any issues with this infusion set).

Which is... a problem. We can hardly ask her to have an infusion set stuck to her skin all the time if it's going to give her a rash like this.

I'm not sure exactly what we do next. I'll call the endocrinologist's office today -- they have to have encountered this before. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll suggest trying a set on some other, less-sensitive locations, like the back of her arm or her thigh; or maybe there's a (probably more expensive) version of the set that we can try. At worst, I figure they'll tell us to put off the pump for a year or so and try again later. Which would be a disappointment, but... well, there's not much else we can do, is there?

The rest of her Sunday went well, though -- she went to a friend's birthday party in the afternoon, which was a swimming party at the YMCA pool, and she even managed to pass the required swimming test (swim one length without stopping, then tread water for one minute). As Matt said, if there had been a letter grade, it would have been a D-, but it was passing, nonetheless! So we'll encourage swimming trips this summer so she can get more practice before she and I go to Mexico and spend hours every day in the resort pool.

***

Alex has been really kicking butt with the whole potty training thing lately. I haven't mentioned it much, because it's one of those tedious journeys that's hard to define the end of, but just lately? Much butt kicked. He's figured out how to hoist himself up onto a "real" toilet seat, so we'll be able to get rid of the nasty little toddler potty altogether soon. Yesterday, he told me when he had to go to the bathroom two or three times without my having to prompt him, which is a huge development, from my perspective.

When he'd been down for his nap for about an hour and a half (just as Matt and Penny were leaving for the birthday party, in fact) he woke up and started calling for me. I heard "go potty" over the baby monitor, so I ran up the stairs to get him. Good thing, too, because Matt had put him down for his nap in his underwear instead of changing him into a pull-up. Astonishingly, he not only woke up and called me to take him to the potty, but willingly went back to his nap when he was done!


He did have one accident last night -- he said he had to go to the bathroom, then went in and apparently spent too long trying to get the light turned on and lost control before he could get his pants down. (At least it was in the bathroom, which is easy to clean up!) And it was right before bedtime, too, when his self-control is weakest. We didn't scold him for that one at all; his intentions had been good; he just hasn't learned to judge his timing yet. And up to that point, he had been a full two weeks with no accidents! (Not counting nighttime, when he's still in a diaper.)

We need to get the boy a proper bed soon, so he can get up and go to the bathroom on his own. I think he's just about there.

Pump It

Well, we kick off tonight! Matt will leave work at his usual time and pick Alex up from daycare, and I'll leave work a bit before 3 to pick Penny up from school, and then we'll stuff the kids in the car with their afternoon snacks and drive down to Norfolk to the CHKD hospital, where they hold a monthly class on insulin pumps, including a presentation covering the history and general functionality available along with some of the pros and cons, and then we'll get a chance to talk to some company reps and put our hands on the devices and ask questions.

We'll figure out what kind of pump we're interested in getting for Penny, and a nurse will fit Penny with an infusion set (that's the bit that goes under the skin, but not the actual tubing and such) so she can wear it for a few days and get a feel for what it will feel like. In the meantime, the endocrinologist's office will help us get started with the paperwork to submit to the insurance company to get approval for the device. (I understand this is much easier than it was even a few years ago, as insulin pumps are rapidly becoming the favored insulin delivery method for type 1 diabetics -- and a lot of insulin-dependent type 2s, as well.)

It's not a short road. Approval from the insurance company can take as long as six weeks, and then we've got a series of learning sessions to attend with the doctor's office. We'll have a how-to class for the infusion sets, and then Penny will wear the pump with just saline in it for a week or so to get used to that, and then they'll start it on insulin and we'll have a whole series of checkups every couple of weeks so they can adjust the basal ("slow drip") rates.

This is where I hope the pump will shine -- right now, her slow-release insulin delivers a more or less equal dose over a 24-hour period, but the thing is that she actually needs a bigger hit in the mornings than in the evenings, so once she's on the pump and we stop with the Lantus, we can adjust how much fast-acting insulin she gets depending on the time of day. And on a day-to-day basis, we can adjust it for special activities. Going swimming at summer camp? Slightly less insulin, please! Caught a cold that's making those blood sugars soar? Boost the insulin!

(This part is a little frightening, I admit. It took almost a year before Matt and I really started to feel comfortable adjusting her mealtime shots based on intangibles like "she's been running high for no apparent reason lately" and a good two years before we even wanted to consider messing with her long-acting insulin dosage without talking to the doctor first. So now we'll have another learning curve for adjusting her basal rates. But hopefully this one will be a little faster, since the principles are the same and we're just learning the technology.)

The pump will also make it easier on her for things like parties and family meals, where there tends to be a big space between dinner and dessert. Right now, we either dose her for dinner and dessert separately (two shots instead of one) or we try to guess at how much dessert she'll eat and then often have to give her a second shot anyway because we guessed wrong. Now we'll be able to input a dose when she puts something on her plate. Initial dose before dinner with what we expect she'll eat. And then if she ends up wanting a second piece of bread, or another cookie, or an extra scoop of ice cream, it's not a big deal -- just tell the pump to give her a little more insulin. We go to a picnic and she wants to graze across several hours instead of eating a single discreet meal -- not a big deal, just dose for what she eats as she eats it. (Well, it's not a big deal diabetes-wise. We'll still have to draw lines for weight control, obviously. But it means that when we feel okay relaxing the rules, we can relax a lot more than before.)

And it'll make it easier for her to go over to her friends' houses, especially for sleepovers. Once she's learned how to operate her pump, we can ask parents to measure and carb-count, and then she can call us to confirm her insulin dose before she tells the pump to deliver it. It's a little extra work -- but we won't have to ask anyone to consider giving her a shot, and that's the big stumbling block for people who've not done it before. And again, it makes grazing (as tends to happen at sleepovers) much less of a hassle.

As far as Penny's concerned, the big advantage is when school starts up again next year. She desperately wants to be able to eat the school lunches (...yeah, I know...) but they're insanely carby. Often more than twice as many carbs as in the lunch we pack her. (All-white bread, french fries, and syrup-packed fruits. Yay for nutrition, eh?) So I had promised her that when she went on the pump, we would try school lunches again and see if that helps keep her sugars from rocketing up into the stratosphere. I honestly don't expect it to work. A gajillion carbs is still a gajillion carbs, no matter how she's getting the insulin dose. But I did promise her we could give it a try. Maybe if she can dial in an initial insulin dose a full half-hour or 45 minutes before lunch, it won't hit her as hard -- we'll have to see how understanding and accommodating her 3rd-grade teacher is willing to be.

Depending on how fast Matt's insurance comes through with approval, we may or may not be on the pump in time for our trip to Cancun. I'm almost hoping not -- as mentioned, there's going to be a moderately steep learning curve on the technology, and I'm not sure I want to be climbing it while we're on vacation, completely disrupting our usual routines (especially in Mexico, where their nutrition labels are so different from ours). So unless the insurance okays Penny's pump more or less immediately and we can get over the first learning hump by the end of July, I may talk to the doctor about shuffling the schedule so that she's still on shots for Mexico.

Anyway, the journey begins tonight, and Penny is excited, and so am I.

BrainDrain

Buh. Mental collapse. I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have anything to say. I'm thinking a lot, about a lot of different things, but none of it is organized enough to post here (and given how scattered some of my posts have been, that's saying a lot!) and lots of it is interlinked with other thoughts.

For example -- publication and e-books and piracy. I've read some articles and essays on rising self-publishing models, now that e-books are becoming more and more popular and print-on-demand is becoming more and more affordable. I don't think there's any question that traditional publishing houses still add value -- but it's a different set of values, or at least a different distribution of those values, than it used to be.

This is substantially linked to the issue of computer piracy -- if an e-book is pirated, does it actually hurt or help sales? Neil Gaiman posted a link on Twitter last night touching on this, but the answer is... "sometimes" and I like that the article calls for some serious study to determine the other factors.

Which ties into my thoughts about what I want to do with this writing sideline I've got going, and what I want to do with my short story when its rights are returned to me in September (the charity story contract is only for one year, as opposed to most of the rest of the publisher's contracts, which are for two). Do I want to try to spruce it up and reprint it? Self-publish it on Amazon for 99 cents? Offer it up as a free read?

Thinking about that particular sideline has me also thinking about sex, and sexual psychology -- I bought a book on Kindle last week on the topic that completely fascinated me, and I'm trying to figure out how to fit what I learned into what I'm writing -- and whether I even should. (For example: Despite the subject matter, about 80% of my audience is female. Does it make sense, then, to try to make my male characters act and think more like "real" men, when it's those unrealistic qualities that appeal to the majority of my readers?)

And the psychology aspect of that ties into a book I'm reading now, for book club, which is about a man trying to follow the rules set down in the Bible as literally as possible for one year. (He started out as an agnostic with the understanding that he's practicing a psychology experiment on himself.) Up to this point, I hadn't much been using the Kindle app's ability to highlight or make notes in texts, but in this one, I've got dozens of highlights and at least ten or so notes with my own thoughts on various points. It's fascinating stuff.

See? I'm kind of all over the map. And this isn't even touching on my thoughts about Penny's growing independence as a diabetic, or Alex's intellectual development and his new gibberish speech, or my sex life, or the assorted games I'm playing on my iPad/iPhone, or the family's social plans for the next few weeks, or my plans for assorted summer activities (my summer is already just about slam full, and it's not even here yet).

My brain, it is full. Does anyone know how to turn it off?

Cheated

Matt had to work this weekend. A lot. Like, 9am until after midnight on Saturday, and then 9am until 4:30pm on Sunday (and then some time spent working from home that evening). Which cheats both of us out of the weekend -- him, because he has to work, and me, because I'm pulling the single parent gig.

So I really, really wasn't prepared for the work week to start this morning. And the less said about this morning and its distinctive flavor of Monday, the better. (Nothing major, just one little frustration piled on top of another, on top of another, on top of... you get the idea.)

But instead of whining (more), I'm going to tell you about the awesome thing that happened this weekend. Friday afternoon, Penny was trying to convince me that she wanted a sleepover with one of her little friends, and I was trying to explain to her how other parents don't usually know how to give insulin shots, and that sleepovers would be a lot easier when she'd learned how to do her own shots -- that way, the parents just have to help with food measurement and carb counting and then calling us to figure dosages.

"But I can do my own shots!" she protested. "I did it before!"

"Well, I need to see you do it, and I need to see you've practiced at it."

She pouted, but wound up having a sleepover at Adin's, (having friends who are medical professionals rocks), so she was happy.

But on Saturday, as we were getting ready for lunch, I said, "Do you want to do your own shot, and show me you can do it?"

Penny hesitated, waffled a bit, and then bargained: she would do the shot if I would hold the shot-blocker for her.

Deal.

So she used her knee to pucker up her arm the way they showed them at diabetes camp, and I put the shot-blocker down for her, and she picked up the needle... hesitated one last time... and then did it.

She did it again at snacktime. And dinnertime (which, being a leg shot, she held the shot-blocker herself). I did her bedtime shot, but she did all her own shots on Sunday, including the bigger bedtime shot. For a couple of them, she not only gave herself the shot, but drew the insulin, after I'd told her how much to draw.

I was incredibly proud of her. So was Matt, when he finally got to see it at dinner last night.

And now I'll feel much more comfortable with her going on sleepovers to houses that don't contain a medical professional or fellow diabetic. (I'll still have to brief the parents, of course, but it's a lot easier for people to agree to tracking food and limiting the random snacking than it is for them to agree to give someone else's child a shot.) And I'll feel a little easier about putting her on an insulin pump -- she needs to know how to do shots for "just in case" events (e.g., the infusion set getting pulled loose and not having a spare on hand).

But mostly, I'm just incredibly stinking proud of her for taking that next step toward independence. (This morning, she was trying to work out how many units of insulin she needed for her breakfast. I talked her through it, but since they haven't started multiplication yet, let alone division, it was kind of tricky. At least breakfast is easy, because we're dividing by 10.)

Relief

Didn't post yesterday because I was taking Penny to her quarterly endocrinology checkup. Which turned out to be fantastic, for two big reasons.


Back in December, Penny's A1C (essentially, an average blood sugar over the previous six to eight weeks) was 7.4, but at the last visit, in February, it was up to 8.5, which is way over where they want it to be. (For scope, the maximum desired A1C for kids Penny's age is 8.0; for teenagers, it's 7.5, and for adults, it's 7.0; the average non-diabetic will generally have an A1C under 6.) So the doctor told us to work on it, and if it wasn't down at this visit, he'd put her on a continuous glucose monitor device for a few days so we could see when the spikes are occurring.

So we've been trying to stay on top of her blood sugars (without triggering lows) and it's been a real headache. A couple of weeks ago, she seemed to be spiking highs all the freaking time, and there wasn't anything we could do about them. She'd be in-range when we went to bed, but wake up a hundred points higher. We'd dose aggressively for food, but she'd still be high at the next meal. It was making us crazy. And of course it wasn't quite pattern-forming enough for us to feel comfortable adjusting her insulin dosages. But for the last couple of weeks, her numbers have been fantastic. Almost suspiciously good. But the A1C was definitely going to include those couple of weeks of craziness.

Which is why I was both surprised and relieved when yesterday's A1C came back as 7.5. She's more or less back to where she'd been in December, comfortably within her target range. Huzzah!

The other thing that's had Matt and I in a frenzy of worry is that we'd been notified, by both Matt's insurance and CHKD (the "local" children's hospital) that their contract with the insurance company was about up and that the insurance company was seriously considering dropping their coverage. Which means that any visits to CHKD would be considered "out of network" and correspondingly more expensive. Switching to my insurance wasn't an option, because it's the same company, just a different plan. (I have an e-friend who manages her son's diabetes without the benefit of medical insurance, but I swear I have no idea how!)

So Matt and I tried to find other pediatric endocrinologists who might be in-plan, but there aren't any in our area. At all. We were debating the choice between paying the out-of-network fees and taking Penny to a non-pediatric endocrinologist, who wouldn't be as conversant with the specific issues of a child diabetic, like growth and the effects of puberty. (And who would, let's face it, be far more familiar with type 2 diabetes than type 1.)

But while I was chatting with the nurse practitioner examining Penny yesterday, and bemoaning the hard choices ahead of us if our insurance drops CHKD, she corrected a misconception that Matt and I both had: the pediatric specialty group that we take Penny to for her checkups is affiliated with CHKD and keeps their primary office in the hospital, but is not actually part of the hospital, and their participation in our insurance is not going away, even if the hospital's does. So if our insurance drops CHKD, it'll mean that they have to send bloodwork to a different lab, and that if Penny is hospitalized and the Williamsburg hospital decides it's something they can't deal with and they need to send her to CHKD for pediatric specialty care, we'll have to pay the out-of-network premiums for that, but her regular checkups will still be covered.

Which, frankly, is a huge load off our minds. It's still somewhat of a concern (especially since hospitalization isn't cheap even in network) but that's not something that happens often, and we'll deal with it as it comes up.

We also talked about some other, more minor, concerns (the high dosage of insulin Penny requires in the mornings, and her weight issues). We made plans to attend a pump class in early June so we can start the process of turning my daughter into a cyborg. (She didn't think that was funny, either, but she still wants a pump. Since that will allow us much finer control over her dosages and give her more flexibility with regard to eating and make it easier for her to do things like go to a sleepover, I'm all for it.)

So it was a good checkup. It left Matt and I both feeling like weights had been lifted from our shoulders, and we're ready now to march onward. How often does that happen in the life of a diabetic's parent?

Happy Camper

The short short summary: Camp was great and I fully expect we'll go back next year.

The short summary: Despite some minor hardships and mishaps, we had a lot of fun. Penny made new friends, tried new activities (and did quite well), and spent two days running and screaming and giggling and bouncing with excitement, and was quite disappointed when we had to come home Sunday morning. She's already begging to call and write to her "diabetes friends". For my part, it was nice to hang out with other diabetes caregivers and swap stories and frustrations and tricks and triumphs, and it was wonderful to watch Penny's enthusiasm. Lessons learned: next year, I'll take Penny out of school about an hour early, because we ran into traffic and barely made it in time for dinner; and I'll also plan to take the Monday after off from work, because I am flat-out exhausted today. To the point that I'm feeling vertiginous and dizzy (which is making me also feel slightly nauseous).

High points of the weekend include:

Penny's been wanting to try fishing for over a year, but this was her first attempt. She managed to catch the biggest fish of our three-cabin (about 15 kid) grouping -- a catfish nearly as long as her forearm. She was kind of ticked when she found out we had to throw all the fish back in the pond instead of eating them for lunch.

Penny waffled a lot on whether she wanted to try this. At first she was excited, and then when she saw the wall, she was disappointed it wasn't made of real rock. And then she was a little frightened by its sheer size. But I talked her into it, and the instructor stood with her and helped her place her feet (but didn't hold her up at all) and suddenly she'd made it up over his head. It was her first attempt at anything like this, and I was unbelievably proud of her.

Despite the fact that the kids didn't really talk about their diabetes with each other much at all (other than to compare pump colors and cool bags) they seemed to really get a lot out of being together and knowing that they weren't alone with this condition. Every time we turned around, someone was testing blood sugar or getting a hit of insulin or having a "low" snack. All the parents were counting carbs and doing calculations and weighing options. And it was all very... normal. Because everyone was doing it, but it wasn't the focus of anything. The focus was on canoeing and pony rides and fishing and crafts and trying to practice skits while keeping them a secret. (The teenagers re-wrote the lyrics to Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You" so that it was about diabetes: "I see you drivin' round town / with your blood sugar down / and that's / not cool!" It was awesome.)

It was a family diabetes camp, so there were families all around, and it was relaxing to know that everyone there had at least some idea of what was going on. No one was going to offer my child a snack without asking her to check her blood sugar first -- but everyone was keeping an eye on everyone else's kids for signs of lows... But aside from a couple of parent support group sessions, diabetes wasn't the point. The point was to have fun and make friends. Mission accomplished.

The "Cow Poke" girls are already looking forward to next year!