First... knowing that not all parents of T1 kids do this (in fact, I'm finding that only a few seem to do this!), I think it is pretty awesome that my in-laws have been trained on how to care for Lenny's diabetes while he is with them. It took a long while for me to get comfortable with him being there by himself after he was diagnosed, only because of my own, internal fears, but, after 2 1/2 years of him living with diabetes, and their persistant care of him, I can now rest at ease when he is there, knowing he is in good hands. I think that is awesome!
Second...I have faced two of my fears this year!
The first fear was allowing Lenny to have REAL cupcakes! Now, I have always known that Type 1 kids can eat anything a normal, healthy child can, it just takes a little extra work on our part. BUT, I have always stuck with the "reduced sugar" or "sugar free" type things (more because of the carb differences, as well as the simple carbs and knowing how they can sometimes act in his body!) But, for my daughter's 4th birthday in October, my husband and I decided to just say "forget it, let's try it!", and so we did! And, ya know what? It worked out perfectly! No hard crash later due to high simple carb intake, and no super high bg later due to inaccurate carb counting or whatever the case may have been! Perfect... absolutely PERFECT! I think that is truely awesome!!
The other fear, and the third, thing I consider the most awesome thing I have done in spite of Lenny having Diabetes is.... We signed him up for wrestling this year. Hard activity always concerns me. It fluxuates his blood sugars severely sometimes. But, again, we decided to say "forget it, lets do it!" and let him go for it! While, he doesn't seem all that interested in wrestling now, he was excited at first when we asked him if he wanted to. He went to a few practices, and we played around with temp basals, proteins and fats in his dinners, and even gave him 3 times as much protein and fat as he is "supposed" to have plus disconnected him from the pump... and he still crashed... hard... after every. single. practice. I wish he was interested enough in wrestling still to continue to go, if for no other reason, so I can continue to play around with things to see what will work for him, but, I'm not going to pressure him! There's always next year, when more and more sport activities will become open to him for his age level!
So those are a few things that I have done that I think are "the most awesome things I've done in spite of diabetes".
This post is my February entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival. If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetessocmed.com/2011/introducing-the-dsma-blog-carnival/
