When you have a child with diabetes you understand that one day they will become an adult with diabetes. All of the issues that you are dealing with now, the care, the management, the diligence with meals, etc, etc will be their responsibility. Honestly this whole thinking scares the crap outta me, but I do what I can daily to give Clifford a bit more responsibility in caring for himself.
It started slowly with testing himself, when he got the pump, he learned to bolus himself for meals, now he’s learning to count his carbs, add everything up and do that. However I didn’t know just how much we were teaching him until this morning. I knew that little by little we were passing the D torch over to him to care for himself when he was older, but it wasn’t until this morning just how much we’ve shown him had become apparent.
At 6:30 he woke up to let me know that my overnight “D” bag needs to have a new juicebox replaced in it, because he had woken up at 4:30 due to being dizzy, but when he tested himself he was 160 something. He said he tried to go back to sleep but still felt dizzy, so at 4:50 am he tested himself again and was 75, he then grabbed the juicebox, and treated himself, tested again and was in range. All the while he did this without waking anyone up.
I have a little bag that I carry with me to do overnight checks, in it I have his meter, his B Ketone meter, alcohol wipes, the dreaded glucagon, and a juicebox, everything that is needed. When I have to go back and retest at 2am which I had to do last night, I leave the bag by his bed, however this particular night I forgot to put it back downstairs, and it turns out that was a good call, as he didn’t even have to leave bed to test and treat.
He managed to handle one of the more scarier situations, overnight lows, with nothing but ease, and took care of it like a champ on his on. It’s that moment that let’s me not be so scared in my thinking of him out on his own as an adult in caring for himself and his diabetes.
