Forgiveness....

While reading my book yesterday the one chapter got me thinking. It was about greeting the day with a forgiving spirit. It really had me thinking about those I thought I had forgiven, and those yet to be forgiven, aka Diabetes. It necessarily doesn't have to be a person you must forgive in order to set yourself free. It can be something that you detest so much it pulls at you from every direction.

I wrote down a few of the quotes that I really enjoyed in there and would like to share it with you all. "When I give forgiveness, I free my own spirit to release the anger and hatred harbored in my heart. "By granting forgiveness, I free my spirit to pursue my future happily and unencumbered by the anchors of my past. While I really love these quotes for other aspects of my past. I am however uncertain if I've reached the spot to forgive D for entering into our lives. I really do not enjoy the resentment, and hatred that I carry with me. It's making me feel tired, and held back from reaching my full potential with everything in life. This part of me knows it's not healthy to harbor these feelings for this disease, but it's so easy to. It almost took my sons life, not once but three times. It's very easy to speak ill about D at any given point.

However I feel I need to release these feelings towards this disease in order to move forward with our future and in order to move forward as a more effective pancreas for Clifford. So today I am offering my forgiveness to Diabetes.

I forgive you for entering into our lives through my son. I forgive you for taking control over his body, I forgive you for being a royal pain in the hiney ALL the time. And most importantly I forgive myself for not always being perfect, I do the best I can and that is all that I can ask for.To quote another quote from my book " I realize today that it is impossible to fight an enemy living inside my head". "By forgiving myself I erase the doubts, fears, and frustration that have kept my past in my present".

I believe if I can forgive D, I can therefore open the door to forgive anything and everyone that has yet to be forgiven, or appropriately forgive those that I had forgiven in the past. Forgiveness is a gift to be given, not a gift to be asked for.

In case you are curious as to the book I'm mentioned a few times now, I highly recommend it. It is called "The Traveler's Gift", by Andy Andrews.

Love / Hate relationship

It took me awhile to summon up just the idea of writing this post. Diabetes and I have a Love/ Hate relationship going on, and I will explain to you why I feel this is.

Before Diabetes, I wouldn't have guessed I was low when I was shaky/ dizzy, and just not feeling right. However last night I felt all of the above and decided out of curiosity to test myself. I was '73' which is considered by all "normal" for a non diabetic, but I felt like crap, and decided to "treat" myself. I ate a pixie stick, and went on with my business. In a short while I felt 100% better. So therefore there is the little bit of "love" I will show to D. I thank D for teaching me to look for the "signs" of a lower blood sugar.

However I also have a HUGE 'hate' relationship with D as well. This 'hate' relationship was even more amplified last night while I had to pry my sleeping child's mouth open, not just one time to 'treat' him but twice. To my non D readers, "Have you ever tried to shove sugar down a sleeping child's mouth"?. It's not fun, let me tell you. Clifford refused after numerous attempts by me to wake up. Now let me start by saying he wasn't dangerously low, but he was lower then I would like to have him at only 10pm. When I went to check him before my bedtime he was '86'. This would be a wonderful # during the day, but at nighttime it upsets my stomach. I then decided to give him a pixie stick to tide him over. After I'd say 5 mins of attempting to wake him up, I had to do what any good mom would do when trying to shove sugar down their sleeping child's throat, get him to slightly open his mouth, and what I like to call "Fish hook" my finger on the side of his cheek to keep it open enough to pour the pixie stick in, all the while he is sleeping. After I got that completed I felt confident enough to go to bed.

Now I don't know about you but I surely believe that God has entrusted in me a 6th sense of sorts, to just have a feeling that I need to test Clifford. However last night I think he offered up some assistance to awake me so I could do it. My neighbors or whomever it was woke me up with a car parked outside our house about 40 mins later, and they would not go away. It was annoying enough to wake me up completely, then for some reason I decided I should go check on Clifford. Once I got up, and looked out the window, the car decided it was time to leave. After testing him again he had only come up to 90! Again an awesome number during the day but at night nope, no thank you. I again had to pry open his mouth and pour another pixie stick down it. Thankfully the rest of the night was rest, until 4am when the twins awoke, and I decided to check on Clifford before going back to sleep. With the beep of the meter it was like a ton of bricks hit me, '232'. REALLY?!?!?!?! By this time the pixie stick really had no effect on this because I retested 30 mins after treating the '90' and he was at a nice 131.

Now apparently the ugly dawn phenomenon decided to rear it's ugly head. After the night we had, and the forcing sugar down his throat, D couldn't let me have at least one victory with a nice waking number, instead he was 213 at breakfast. Well you know what D, I did have a victory, he woke up to greet yet another day! I kept him from dropping lower, and God was on our side to awake me to check him when he was only 90! So ha take that!

Behavior and Diabetes....

Have you ever noticed your child having overly obnoxious behavior as in being more whiny then normal? Perhaps throwing a tantrum over something you think is very silly. How about lashing out with rude words and phrases at you and siblings? Well this sort of behavior is normal for kids of all ages with or without D.

However there are times I can tell Cliffy is either high or low based on his behavior alone. When he's high, he tends to be more whiny, more easy to throw a temper tantrum, especially over nothing at all. He is more grumpy, and crabby when he's high as well. Besides having a high blood sugar is no fun at all, you get a headache and feel down right icky, and worn out. When he's lower he has overly obnoxious behavior and tends to be downright rude and disrespectful.

But like with everything else D related I don't let Clifford use his diabetes as an excuse to be bad. He's a smart kid and if I started letting him do that he would act up and blame it on D all the time. I've had many talks with him that start either with, "Go test yourself, then we'll talk", or "Just because your (low/high) doesn't give you the right to act up. Trying having that convo in public around others. "Just because your high doesn't mean you can act like that to me"... The looks are priceless.

I fully understand some of these behaviors are increased in intensity due to blood sugar's. However I do not let him use it as an excuse. It goes with he can do whatever he sets his mind to D or not. I want him to feel like a normal kid, and we talk about the actions and how he doesn't get a free ticket to being disrespectful.

What to accomplish before the Apocalypse.....

With Judgement Day now rescheduled until October 21st, 2011, I got to thinking what I wanted to accomplish before it gets here. First off I see it happening more like my picture, but eh, that's just me. Secondly I would prefer it wait at least 6+ months into 2012 so I can accomplish one of my bigger things to get done before said apocalypse, but that's a personal one and it's secret ;).

Now we really don't have a lot of time until Oct 21st, 2012, so I better get cracking on what I want to get done. The twins will be turning 1 at the beginning of October, so that's a big one. I think a cure for Diabetes would be awesome before the end. Also a nice visit to Ireland would be super as well. I would like to get a new cute dress, a dress that I can wear now being Non pregnant for the summer, and perhaps some new sandals. A new bikini would be nice as well, but I need to get a tan first, no one wants to see Caspar walking around.

Now with all fun and games over with I really do not believe Judgement Day will happen on Oct 21st, 2011. And it's a little kick to Christians everywhere for ONE person to claim he knows when it is going to happen when there is technically only one person who actually knows.

"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father

Diabetes and Insurance...

We've had our battles in the past and have come out on top, with the most recent being a pharmacist boo boo that took 6 days to fix. Yes 6 days until we had in hand all our monthly diabetic supplies that keep Clifford alive. They were lucky that I make sure to stockpile and had all that I needed to get us through until the pulled their heads out of their bums and fixed the error.

So now this time it's the insurance. We asked about getting Clifford on a CGM because he's not always feeling his lows. He will feel himself drop, but not always his lows. He is also having random lows during the night only found on random checks, not scheduled ones.

This mama needs some sleep and so does our T1D. Just something to put our mind at ease a bit and help with these random drops. So what are we told, "Talk to the administrator that handles the insurance claims to see if it's covered". Well the admin finally calls back about a week later to let me know "It's not covered at all, they won't cover it", however you can purchase the machine for only $1200, and the sensors are $40 a pop and need to be changed what every 2-3 days.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA to you miss administrator because I refuse to be told that the insurance won't cover something I'm dead set on that my son needs. So I nicely said, "Okay you'll be hearing from me again soon" muahahahahaha (evil laugh).

Currently in the process of talking with said insurance company and having our Case Management team that handles claims that "are not covered" work on it. I'll update when things get situated. But insurance and diabetes is enough to give me a headache. It's not like a pain killer you can just deal with the pain without. Certain diabetic supplies and oh yeah INSULIN they need to what's that, yeah LIVE!

Looking at Photographs.....

That's Clifford about 1 month before being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. D probably already began it's invasion on his body during this time, but we had no idea. It's hard to go back and look at old photographs, instead of just remembering the happy times, or that particular occasion, it's more of a "Hey that was before D" scenario. All of the pictures now are "Before D", and "After D".

Eventually I get to remembering what happened or what was going on when that picture was taken, but the first thought was that was before all of this.. How do you get past labeling your pictures "Before and After D?". You don't, you will always remember if that picture was taken before or after. It's not always a bad thing, it can be hard, and sad, but it's also a time to think about how lucky you are, even now after the diagnosis.

This particular picture may have been before D, and even though it's hard to look back on these pictures, it's also a happy feeling because he is still with us. It takes awhile to get over the guilt of diagnosis I will call it. I previously wrote a post on this subject which you can find here. But eventually we do move on from blaming ourselves for D entering our lives, and work in taking as much comfort in our new "norm" that we can. Besides D has enough power in our relationship already, don't give it more then it deserves!

Screw You D, this summer!!

After 4 days of waking with "Moderate" ketones, (We flushed them out everyday btw) we finally had a reading of none this morning!! All week I've been pushing Vitamin C, and his children's vitamins to keep him free from catching what was going through the younger kids. So far so good :). The verdict from the doctors was the girls had an Upper Respiratory infection, which was one of the 800 million things Google suggested it could be, Go Google for being right!

After this past cold/flu season I'm really hoping we can all catch a break from illnesses. Caring for a sick kid is well difficult, caring for a sick diabetic kid is scary on top of difficult. Thankfully we managed to get through many illnesses free from going to the ER or any hopsital stays! We will be going into the Summer season with a new attitude, "Screw you D!, we're in charge!".

We are not going to let D ruin our summer. D will not get in the way of normal summer fun like playing outside, running, playing sports, or anything else that involves an increase in activity! D can take a back seat this summer and let us do our thing. So to D we will say:

Screw You D

This summer you will let us be

Normal kids all full of life

Take a backseat and cause no strife

We will run, jump, skip and play

until the sunshine fades away

When you come knocking

we will be rocking

On top of our D game

causing you nothing but shame

Take a break this summer

Because for you, D, it will be a bummer

Okay so my poetic skills are lacking but you get the picture! Why not join us in saying "Screw You to D" for your summer vacation as well!