March 22, 2008

Tune Up

Diabetes is like owning a car, regularly scheduled maintenance, only the diabetes requires more frequent tune ups. I would hate taking the car in every 3 months. I gotta admit I don’t love taking the kids in either.

We went in for the quarterly tune up this week, the kids not the car. With two type 1 kids we figured out long ago it was key was to get them both scheduled the same day. Apparently stressed out minds think a like, we were the first of four families bringing in doubles that day. We asked our diabetes team if they had any triples, well there was one family with two kids and a mom who were all T1 but mom wasn't a patent.

This was our third quarterly A1C & tune up since the boy decided that he would take full control of his diabetes care. This started when he mentioned in passing at Children with Diabetes Friends for Life last summer, “Dad I am supposed to tell you I want to do all my own diabetes care for three months.”

“OK”

That was one of three sentences we heard all week. Not that that was a bad thing, he was having a lot of fun with his peers and we didn't see him. Let see… the other sentence were, "We had a good session this morning." and "Cool I won an iPod."

It’s been his deal since then, the diabetes care, not the iPod. It was a shuffle he already had a 20gig color iPod.

He had been expressing concern that the A1C number may be high for a few weeks. No specifics just worry that it may be up.

Nope. His best A1C yet.

That was outstanding considering he grew again. I have to give him props. I thought I was the king of estimating carbs but he just took the crown. I don’t think I have ever seen him measure anything and being a growing teenager he eats all the time. (Eating off a schedule is what the pump is for.)

So we talked with the nurse about the importance of feeling lows and not having unexpected lows, testing before bed and when he gets up. It's hard to have a "you need to be on top of this," conversation when he clearly is.

Somewhere in here I realize that I had been pre-positioned to expect to need to have the "you need to be on top of this" conversations and was unprepared for the good number. The boy has become a politician, he had been managing expectations. I had been played like a fiddle. Brat! Wonder where he picked that up? (Comments about apples falling from trees are not welcome.)

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