It feels like we are treading water in diabetes land these days. Most of Ethan’s diabetes management is stable. I’m not having to tweak ratios or basal rates very often. Test, eat, bolus, correct when needed…repeat ad nauseum. He has his next endo appointment in a week and I am curious, as always, to see what his A1c is. We have done a little traveling in the last 3 months and travel usually makes for some crazy numbers on the meter. Whenever the unexpected 496 showed up at dinnertime as we drove back to Tennessee after Thanksgiving, I couldn’t help but think, “Drat. There goes that nice A1c number.”
I found that I had to do a lot more guesswork with carb counts this Thanksgiving holiday. Is it because two years into it I’m just more laid back? I don’t know. I looked up what I could when I didn’t know the carbs or have a nutrition label to refer to, but I didn’t go crazy trying to get the exact carbs either. Don’t misunderstand – I will always calculate Ethan’s carbs to the best of my ability. That is my job right now as his mother. But some days the information simply isn’t available and your best guess just has to suffice.
Ethan celebrated his two-year diaversary (anniversary of his diabetes diagnosis, in case that’s a new term for you) earlier in the month and I am so proud of him and how he handles this strange life. He does nearly all of his blood sugar testing himself and does much of his own bolusing (delivering insulin), both from his meter/remote and directly on his pump. We are working on helping him calculate his own carbs, but for now that always requires an adult’s help to be sure it is accurate. Our next challenge is for Ethan to learn to do his own site changes. It isn’t difficult, but there are a lot of steps involved and one mistake can lead to a multitude of problems.
So I guess we will continue to tread water. Diabetes will always throw us a rogue wave every now and then…but we’re good swimmers.
