Baby Steps

Baby Steps…all over again.  You know it has been 10 years since I’ve had babies in my house and yet we are taking baby steps all over again.  Yesterday we had a check in with the Diabetes Education Center.  Despite my fears and misgivings, they are telling us that we are doing good at logging and managing D in our home.  I wish I could take credit for it, but I know that D is lying in wait and will rear it’s ugly, the numbers don’t make any kind of sense despite our best efforts, anytime it wants head.  Right now D is just playing nice too.  I don’t take that for granted.

When Seth was diagnosed his numbers were so high that he was unaware of what it felt like for his body to be “normal” and completely unaware of how a low felt for his body, he was incapable of feeling the difference between 400 or 50.  As I had mentioned, Seth’s being on the wrestling team was a huge awareness factor for us in diagnosing his D.  However the coaching staff has not dealt with a D kid on the team yet.  While we had made a decision as a family that D would have to fit into our lives, we were completely overwhelmed with learning all about D and learning what normal and low felt like for Seth, so we felt inadequate  to “teach” them how to deal with something we had not dealt with ourselves.  Seth asked to take this year off from wrestling until he was comfortable with D and we supported his decision for the above reasons.

So yesterday was a big D milestone for us.  We allowed Seth to join the Lego Mindstorms after school club.  This meant Seth was solely responsible for his D care from 2:30-4:15…no nurse, no parents (although I was a phone call away).  We planned and we talked.  A healthy snack was sent (we are so in love with Barney Almond Butter in individual packets right now, that and an apple curbs a low and maintains a stable BG for Seth).  We arranged for him to keep his tester at school and a roll of glucose tablets, just in case something really funky happened.  I sent the teacher our plan and my phone numbers…and anxiously allowed the cord to stretch a little.

I even managed to NOT call when I thought he would be walking in the door to see how it went…oh man was THAT hard.  I pulled into the garage and as the door was coming down the door to the house cracked open and Seth came and sat in the car with me for a minute, excitedly telling me about his day and how much fun he had at Lego club.  And how at 3:30 he started feeling a little funny so he went and tested and he was low (68) so he ate his snack and felt fine.  I asked if he tested 15 minutes later and he said “he didn’t…he forgot”.  I reminded him that needed to happen to make sure his numbers are heading back up.  He smiled and said “okay” and then he turned to me and said…”mom, this was a great first step”  and slipped back into the house.

WHAM!  With those words my little man had my heart in his hands.  I am overwhelmed at his courage and in awe of how he faces his challenges.  Someone told me that diabetes is harder on the parents than it is on the child and in some ways, I totally get that.  Right now, Seth just takes this as another layer to his life.  His father and I are the ones who struggle and juggle as much of this as we can for him, because he IS a kid and we don’t want D to take any more of that from him than it absolutely has to.

So yeah, today was our first baby step…but I felt like we jumped off a cliff.