Numbers

My blogging efforts have been a bit, well, lazy recently. Other things have been occupying my mind, like numbers. Specifically, my daughter's blood glucose numbers.

She's always run on the higher side of normal, and she's always had some possible symptoms of diabetes, but nothing was definitive and it was all sort of random. But we have a rather extreme family history of types 1 and 2 (among other things), so I've always been careful with our food choices.

Last year, when my daughter still attended public school, I began letting her eat school lunches (even whole, organic mamas know when to pick their battles). She assured me she was making healthy choices, but a look at her purchase history told another story. She was buying ice cream, chocolate milk, and making garbage meal choices. Can I blame her? Not really. She's a kid, and she had temptation staring her in the face every day with a lunch account she was free to make her own choices with. She's a kid. But toward the end of the year, she started telling me she had trouble seeing the chalkboard - but only after lunch. She also felt tired, nauseated, or had stomach aches or a "funny feeling" in her throat after lunch.

Some of the tummy troubles were bus anxiety because of bullying issues. The rest, I only recently realized were due to blood sugar. The other night she said, "I feel bad." It is really out of character for her to say that, even when she is very sick, so I started asking a lot of questions. Before long, I grabbed the glucose meter and discovered she was at 197 before even finishing her meal. So I've been testing her a couple of times a day, more if she has symptoms (which are becoming less frequent with limits on carbohydrates and sugars - she's not pleased about missing her beloved PB&J sandwiches, but she's handling this with more patience and a better attitude than I think I would expect from an adult).

We have an appointment with a pediatric endocrinologist, but it's a long wait. The wait is frustrating in a way, but it will allow me to compile a good journal of what is happening with her glucose levels, how it varies with different foods and activity levels, and what symptoms she is experiencing. Hopefully this will reduce additional waiting, since I assume the doctor would ask us to do this and report back with the results after the appointment. So far, her morning fasting numbers are on the higher end of normal, but all of the others have been between 140-200 (random, post-meal, etc.). While it isn't the scary highs that many of the type 1s in my family have experienced, as in so high it doesn't even register on the meter, the wonderful source of parental anxiety known as the University of Google informed me that anything over 140 can cause cellular damage. Almost every reading she has is over 140.

My free time has been spent researching, reading, asking for advice from others in a diabetic forum I joined as far as getting the numbers lower and more stable, and so on. Fortunately, her diet won't need to change much, because she does eat very healthy (for the most part). She's never had fast food (unless you count Subway or the occasional pizza), and we don't keep soda in the house. I'm convinced if she ate the SAD (standard American diet), she'd probably already be a full-blown diabetic on insulin.

But I still feel all of those nagging parental questions. Did I do something to cause this? Could I have done something to prevent it? And the big one, ohmyfreakinggod...what if we have to do insulin!? Insulin scares me. With all of the diabetics in my family, I know how scary insulin can be; and in growing children, how the bar is always moving and doses are always changing and hospital stays are not uncommon when getting things balanced out.

And there comes the lump in my throat. Because my daughter is, I swear to you, the best, sweetest, kindest, most compassionate soul on the planet. She does not deserve this. Me? I'm not that awesome, and I'm all grown-up. I'd take it for her. I just want her to be a care-free kid, where her biggest worries in life right now are how her brother can beat her at math games and how she's gotta conquer that tree climbing fear.

So that's why I have been blogging less. That, and the holidays. And the fact that the weather here has remained unseasonably warm and snow-free until this past week. 'Round here, we take advantage of those opportunities when we're fortunate enough to get them!