Thursday, August 16, 2012

Welcome back to life with diabetes!

The new pump is on. The old basal rates have been retrieved. All rates are now posted on a sticky note beside my computer on top of the "MOTHER" heart my oldest son made for me back when he was probably in Grade 5 or so. 

My youngest son arrived home yesterday.  Together we sat down and uploaded the new pump and decided to try something different--we put food into the menu section of the pump.  Its a "thing" that allows you to have the carbs for favorite foods right there. We added the important things like Big Macs and Tim Horton's Smoothies.  He was then good to go.

I really wanted to look over his meter and see what he had (or hadn't) been doing while he was away.  I decided to let him settle back into his own routine first.  I thought about not looking at the meter at all.  What was it going to tell me? 

It would probably tell me that he ran way higher than I would like. It would probably tell me that he wasn't testing when he was supposed to. It would probably just elevate my blood pressure and frustrate me.  There was nothing that I could do about the past. I was best to just focus on today and go forward. 

That was in an ideal world but by now you should know that I am far from ideal.  I had to look. I had to know. 

Just before bed, I asked him to see his meter. Despite the fact that I was sure that he was out of One Touch test strips, he swore that he had used an old green One Touch meter while he was away and left it behind (convenient!).  To make life simple for me however, he had found an old log book and written down all of his readings!  What a great child with diabetes.   

The logbook showed readings from every day.  There was one low.  There were some highs with notes as to what had happened. There were a few readings in range.  

My son waited for my reaction.  I said that I liked that he had written everything down but sadly he had logged before and created every single reading. I was not so sure that I could trust this book either. Part of me felt terrible for saying that. Part of me knew that there was a very good chance that I was right to doubt him.  Part of me hoped I was wrong.  I wanted to think that he did test when he wrote down that he did. I want to believe that the readings were all correct.  The diabetes police inside of me said that while some readings were right, he most likely did not have enough test strips for two weeks of using that meter.  His readings were far from perfect but not as bad as I would think that they should have been for all of the sites he swore he lost (four site changes in one day) as well as a pump that was failing. 

He just shrugged. I don't know if that was saying "well I tried to get it by you." or "I logged, you don't believe me. Whatever."  I hope its the first. Either way, today is a new day.  Last night was a night of highs.  Welcome home diabetes! 

2 comments:

  1. well barb, teenagers are awesome creatures. reading this reminded me of all the times i wrote down my results for my mother, or took them to the dr's, and they were sooo bogus! lets hope that his logs were real. and if not, lets hope he learned that you will question him! and try to remember that he came home in one piece and every day is a new day with diabetes!!

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  2. Thanks so much! You are right. I have dropped it after a few questions and am focusing on the now...and boy is that a mess :)

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