I was at a Diabetic Youth Foundation event this weekend and my brain is so full of ideas and experiences I’m struggling to write today because they all want to dash out! 

There are so many families out there who are doing great things for their kids with diabetes.  Great job, everyone, in learning what it takes to make diabetes work in your family!

One mom shared that, although her 11 year old daughter is beginning to assert her independence, there are times she asks her daughter if she checked her blood sugar.  When her daughter, laying on the couch, sighs and says “no” sometimes she also says “will you do it?” and sticks out her hand.

How great is that?!

Of course, the mom is thrilled to help her daughter with this “little” thing that, when added together over the course of several times every day for the rest of our lives, is in actuality a humungous thing.

And the best part is the daughter gets a break from the job.

Cool deal for all involved.

So then I started to think about what it would feel like if I asked my husband to check my blood sugar.  He worked up at camp and did midnight checks on the campers all the time, so I know he knows what to do.  He’s also seen me do it maybe a kazillion times in the twelve years we’ve been together. 

But I still think his eyes would bug out and his eyebrows would hit his hairline if I randomly went to him and said “you know, I’m tired of this; can you do it for me?”  It’s a pretty entertaining mental picture.

And, I’d have to get over the assumption that he’d do it completely wrong.    He’d probably do just fine!  But it would really be weird.

When I donate platelets (not whole blood anymore; it took too many days for me to recover when I lost that much fluid through donating so I only do platelets now) they do a finger stick to check my iron levels.  I always want to grab the lancet and just use mine instead.  They never let me—I’ll never understand why not!  And they always jab me in the middle of the pad of my finger so it hurts more (I’m an edge kind of girl).  AND they put a band-aid on the spot!  For someone who does a finger stick multiple times a day they are doing nearly every part of that process plain old WRONG.

But maybe next time it feels like too much, I’ll ask my husband to check me.  Or maybe I’ll ask him to do one or two before that so we can talk about how to do it the “right” way.

It’s good to have him as a backup every now and then.

I must write on this topic T.O.D.A.Y. because I have had the magazine article next to my keyboard all week long and omg.

The magazine article (Self magazine October 2010) gives tips for to Conquer Candy Temptation.  The article of course has photos of Halloween candy all over it, so I’ve been looking at these photos every time I’m at my computer all week.

If only those tips helped me.

See, I’ve had this theory for a really long time that people with type one diabetes just have a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of candy.  (Just try telling someone not to eat something and see what happens.)

Fortunately, the message has been altered since insulin pumps and carbohydrate counting became mainstream.  However, it’s still a big deal when we eat candy and other people are around.  They are watching and they don’t seem to hesitate asking us what we’re doing.

So yes, I admit it.  I eat candy.  Yes, I’m a trainer and yes I watch what I eat because I don’t want to gain back any of the 45 pounds I lost eight years ago.  But I still find space for candy.

If you’re interested, the four tips the article provided are:

1. Stock up on lollipops.  (They take a lot longer to eat and don’t tend to have as many calories as chocolate or other candies.)
2. Rock a cute costume.  (If you know you have to squeeze into a certain outfit on Halloween you may be more motivated to avoid food you know won’t help you look good.)
3. Eat treats after 4pm.  (What?!  The RD says really to avoid eating candy in the morning since you’ll crave it all day long if you start too early.)
4. Be candy-free November 1.  (Donate extra treats to Operation Gratitude opgratitutde.com a nonprofit that sends packages to overseas military personnel.

I decided a while back, after I learned that I don’t gain or lose more than a pound or two throughout the year, that I’m okay with my candy habit.  It’s not a big deal, I cover the carbs with insulin, and I try hard to not feel badly about what I eat.  I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on in my life and making myself feel badly over eating a piece of candy seems like a lot of wasted energy going someplace not very useful.

And of course now that it’s Candy Corn season again, whenever I’m low I reach for the bag and have 11 pieces.  The white tips are the best! 

There is always a place to fit food in, somehow.

So it has really only recently (within the past two years) come to my attention that there is a MEDAL.  I could get a MEDAL for living with diabetes for 50 years.

Well, then.

I have run more miles than I care to count just for a single medal.  I’ve gotten on a plane, flown across the country, frozen my tuchis off, run 26 miles, and nearly crashed on the ice on the ground at the water stations for a medal!

But this one would be a pretty cool one to earn.

It’s the Joslin medal.

I think the history is critical to understand why they even count years with diabetes… keep in mind, I am really only in the third generation of type one diabetics who did not receive a death sentence along with their diagnosis.   I remember my grandma cried for days when I was diagnosed and I never understood why.  Now that I’m old enough to understand what a type one diagnosis meant to her, it makes more sense.  Maybe she remembered seeing kids in hospital beds, wasting away.

That has never been a part of my disease.  My disease doesn’t have a time limit. In fact, I quite honestly have never really seen many limits for myself related to my type one diabetes.  I know I faced one when I realized I could never be a commercial pilot… and when I realized I needed special permission for some things… but other than that… yeah, I kind of draw a blank.

Now, I understand there are limits out there.  I just don’t choose to see them. Why limit myself??  I’ve got limits in terms of time, space, means, ideas, geography, practicality, gravity, financial… with all of those limits out there why would I let my diabetes add one??

Yes: Be smart.  Learn.  Plan.  Figure.  Calculate.  Estimate.  Determine.  Be flexible.

But never stop.  Stopping will not only shrink your world, it will cause you to impose needless limits on your own life.

They don’t award medals for that kind of behavior.  Nope; they award medals for those people who have gone out and done their best amidst some daunting adversary conditions.

I’m thinking I have 27 years until I get that medal.  Maybe I should download the application now, just so I have it.

OMG I see they have a 75 year medal too!!!  Now I want that one too!!!! 

How long before you earn YOUR medal??

It’s no big secret that diabetics care about the carbohydrate counts of the food we eat.  We have to—if we didn’t care about how many carbohydrates we ate, we’d be bouncing around with much more metabolized sugar in our blood stream than is healthy.  (I mean, more than we do anyway.)

I remember having to match the food I ate to the insulin I took.  What a miserable way to eat!  If I was hungry, I ate the same thing as if I weren’t hungry.  Every meal was supposed to be the same, in an effort to minimize the variances that comprise an interesting and enjoyable life.

No wonder that system didn’t work out very well for me.

Now that I match my insulin to the food I eat, I have a much better time with things.  Meals are more enjoyable, and it just feels good to use my brain and have options when it comes to feeding myself.

I read a question from a parent earlier who asked how people count carbohydrates at a restaurant, if the food isn’t listed in a calorie book.

Hmm.

I don’t think the point of counting carbohydrates is to make it an exact science.  I think the point is to get as close as we can, but there comes a point where you need to simply let go. 

If it were easy, we’d all do it and we’d all have non-diabetic A1cs and we’d never go high or low.

Right.

So get used to the fact that this is the human body.  If it were simple, we’d all live long healthy lives with little difficulty.  If it were a mathematic equation we’d study, pass the exam, and next time when we get the same exact question we’d have the same exact result.

But that isn’t diabetes.

Diabetes involves a TON of guesses.  Educated guesses, of course, but still: when it comes down to it we are guessing.  So quite honestly if you are off by 5 or 10 grams when you’re counting a new food, one day you’ll go low and another day you’ll go high.  It’s just how the disease works in our body.

Don’t skip a new restaurant because you don’t know if they rinse their pasta before serving the spaghetti, leaving starchy water on the pasta which may result in more carbohydrates on the plate.  Don’t avoid trying a new dish because you don’t know how many carbohydrates are in the sauce.  Don’t go only to restaurants with calorie counts on their wall… who knows if the person in the kitchen used a different size spoon than the person making the calculations?

Do take a class in carbohydrate counting.  Do get a set of measuring cups and use them as serving spoons at home for a few weeks.  Do look at what the sizes look like on your plate.  Learn the basics for what you need to count, and use that knowledge in the world.  Interact with your world and involve yourself.  Take guesses.  Let go of the idea of ever getting it “right”.  (It’s going to change tomorrow, anyway.)

Your world is as big and as beautiful as you let it be.  Don’t let the variances that affect your life with diabetes make that world smaller by one inch.