Hi Hi Hi Merry Christmas?

Hi! Hi! Hi! Merry Christmas??? Well my son says that Christmas will bring changes.  I certainly hope so.  Life was coasting along okay.  Diabetes was just giving us its usual little bumps but all in all we were handling it alright.  Testing remained hit and miss but we had a few more hits than misses.  Diabetes must have realized that Christmas is fast approaching and we don't really have a lot of time for messing around with other "stuff".

We started out with a few highs here and there.  Perhaps some basal tweaking was in order.  Once that was done we ran into a new catastrophe--tubing breakage that went unnoticed for a few hours while at school.  He had spare sites at school but instead went through about 100 units of insulin filling tubing and correcting.  He was ketonic by the time he came home of course but quickly changed tubing, insulin and began to guzzle water. I was proud that he handle things on his own and took charge of his care so thoroughly (once he got home).  Thankfully he was a lot better within a few hours.

Next came the night time snack with no bolus to cover. He was high and felt ill during the night but quickly came down with a correction. Finally we just had highs.  Pancakes are evil and lead to highs. Growing also leads to highs.  Pancakes we can extended bolus for.  Growing is going to take a bit more work. The shirt I bought him during the summer on our vacation is now too tight.  The running shoes he had for school no longer fit.  The child I looked down on, now looks me in the eyes. This growth thing is going to take some serious insulin to cope with.

Its funny, when my oldest son would grow I would just hate to see my baby getting so big and my wallet would hate to see me having to buy new clothes so quickly.  With my younger son, again, I can't believe how quickly he is growing, clothing him is not cheap, but we also have the added grey hairs of trying to guess at basal and bolus rates.

Life can't be simple when diabetes moves in.  Of course these little quirks in otherwise, decent blood glucose levels are occurring in the month before we go and have another A1c done.  We were going to have this one in a much better range.  I am not as hopeful anymore.  We now have errors, puberty, and Christmas holidays all to mess with life. 

Last night I thought how much simpler things were when I had full control.  I fed him.  I tested him. I bolused for his food. I logged.  It was a lot of work but he didn't eat around the clock like he does now.  I could keep readings in range.  Life was simple.  Now he does things on his own. He can cook.  He eats enough for six small children and he doesn't need Mom around at all functions.  He does his own WAG for carb counting (and usually he is pretty good at it). Mom sits in the background as the constant voice of "Test. Bolus. Log." 

Somehow we will make it through the holidays.  We will survive the results of another diabetes report card (aka the A1c results).  We hopefully will even survive puberty!

May your house be filled with love, laughter and great blood sugar readings this holiday season! And the best present of all? Let's hope that Diabetes takes a permanent vacation soon from all of our lives! Merry Christmas!