Diabetes effects the whole family. Everyone in the house has had to learn how to check blood sugar and give shots. This proves to be challenging to do during the night. I'm getting pretty good at checking blood sugar. The hardest part is when he pulls his hand away just as I am ready to get the drop of blood on the test strip. He never wakes up completely and he never remembers me coming to his room. We are also very fortunate that he doesn't drop to dangerous lows during the night so I do not need to check him during the night. Because we have been getting up so early in the morning, Nathanael goes to bed quite early. So I end up giving him his Levemir shortly after 9. This is when I check his blood sugar.
The whole family is learning how to count carbs and to measure our food. When we dish our plates, everyone has to dish their plate into servings. We go through a lot of measuring cups in a day. (Some people use their measuring cups to bake each day, we use ours to fix our plates.) To make it easier for him at school, I write the carb count on the zip lock bags that contain his food. He is learning to adapt when eating. There are times that he gets full and cannot finish his plate. This can be very bad because he took a shot for the amount of carbs on his plate. There are times he will drink a glass of milk to compensate for the carbs that he will not be eating.
Another frustrating part about about blood sugar is that it is completely unpredictable. He can go to bed with good levels and he wakes up high. This took me a long time to figure out. I still don't understand it. Our bodies go through a reset during the night and this causes blood sugar to rise. He probably wouldn't be starting high if he was able to sleep a couple more hours. He gets so upset when he is high. He tries so hard to keep it down. Sometimes he over compensates and takes too much insulin. (This causes an entirely new problem. When he drops too fast, he doesn't feel well. He gets a headache and he feels like he's going to be sick.) Today has been a good day. He started at 176 and at 10 AM which is 4 hours after his first shot, he was actually lower. Then at lunch he was below 100. This hasn't happened ever at school.
Another frustration about diabetes is that every day is different. We have been very fortunate to not have to deal with too many lows. Nathanael tends to run high most days. Luckily he stays in the 200's. Ideally we would like him to stay closer to 100 but that is really hard. Especially when you are a 12 year old boy. All he wants to do is eat. Foods that have low or no carbs are expensive and don't last long around the house. (Not to say that we kept a lot of junk food around the house. But I never use to buy beef jerkey on a regular basis. I also didn't always keep nuts of some sort around the house.) So what ends up happening when he is home by himself after school is he eats and then doesn't realize how much he had and then when I get home from work his blood sugar is out of control. It sure would be nice to be able to take a pill and make it better.
The past six months has been filled with many firsts. I feel like Nathanael is starting life over. He is experiencing everything all over again. He had his first sleep over having diabetes, he went to Bible camp for a week. (That was stressful on me!!) We went through our first Halloween. Halloween proved to be a little easier than I thought it would be. He participated in trunk or treat at the church and brought home a bag of candy. He mixed his candy with the candy we bought for Halloween. We only had a small amount left. I have put it away and give out a few pieces at a time. He doesn't ask for it like he had in the past. It is nice to have some candy around to take with us to use if he goes low. Coming up next week is his first Thanksgiving. He will be eating foods that he hasn't eaten since diagnosis. There are just some foods we avoid. Food is so hard when a person you love has diabetes!
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