Morning Keeps on SUCKING…
Then, there is my son… He has diabetes and is wearing a sensor for three days to help the doctors figure out the best insulin rates on his pump. Last night when he was with my husband at the workout place, his blood sugar ended up dropping. It wasn’t very low, only 60, but on the way home they bought candy and juice for him. He ate a Nerds Chain, a S’mores Bar, and had a full bottle of juice. Now, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with diabetes, but that’s WAY too much sugar for a person who is only at 60. That’s even too much for a person at 40, and the S’mores bar is so full of fat that wouldn’t even help bring up a blood sugar quickly… all that does it make the blood sugar soar later on. Time and again I’ve told them that when he is low the doctor says he should take four glucose tabs, wait ten minutes and test, then take more glucose as needed. That really should do the trick. I’ll admit sometimes I get nervous and will overfeed him too, but two candy bars and a full juice is ridiculous.
Anyway, part of this whole thing with the sensor is that we have to record every bit of food with the grams of carbohydrates and turn that in with the sensor when we return it. Well, of course neither of them bothered to record this information and to add insult to injury, when I tested my son’s blood glucose during the night, he was so high he had to get more insulin and the numbers were such a mess that I know the doctors aren’t going to be able to use any of the data from last night for anything. But, on the off chance they could make some sense out of it, I was excited when my son slid into the front seat after I dropped my husband at the station, and noticed that the candy wrappers were still on the floor. I said, “Let’s get the nutrition information from them so we can put it in the log.” He said, “I’ll get it later.”
Now, if you know my son, you know that means it won’t happen so I said, “No, let’s get it now.” He continued to insist on doing it later and, after the already frustrating morning I’d had with my husband, I just sort of lost it and pulled over to the side of the road and said, “We’re going to get it RIGHT NOW! Get a piece of paper from your back pack.”
“I don’t have any paper in my back pack.”
“You must have SOMETHING… you’re going to school.”
“I only have the paper that’s for Algebra.”
“Well, tear off one sheet of it and we’ll use that.”
“No, I’ve already torn off too many sheets and won’t have enough paper.”
“DO IT RIGHT NOW!!!”
He pulled a spiral notebook and said, “Here, you might as well take the whole thing.”
“I don’t WANT the whole thing. Now, give me a sheet of paper!”
He opened the notebook and started flipping through pages. Several pages had notes that left pages blank at the bottom and I suggested he tear off a strip from one of those if he didn’t want to lose a whole sheet of paper to this endeavor. He chided me that he needed those notes (I didn’t argue that he would have to tear into the section that had been written on.) He contineud flipping to the nearest blank page. It came as no surprise that there was about another 1/4-1/2 inch of blank paper behind that, more than half the book was blank. He tore out a piece of paper with great disgust then handed it to me.
“Now put your notebook away and get a pen or a pencil.”
“I don’t have a pen or a pencil.”
“Okay, then we’ll get one from my purse.”
“I have to put away my notebook first.”
With slow precision, he returned the notebook to his bag. I handed him my purse and pointed to where the pen was, telling him to take it out. The reason I hadn’t taken it out myself was that he balked at holding the candy wrappers and reading the nutrition information to me because he said it was nasty and had mud on it from the floor so he didn’t want to touch it. I had instructed him to give it to me; I would hold it. So now he took the pen from my bag and tried to write on the paper in the air with no backing. I was really annoyed and told him to rest the paper against the dashboard. Finally I was able to read the nutrition information from each candy bar and the juice. At least he wrote it down neatly.
We didn’t speak to each other the rest of the way to school and I was almost sweating I was so over it with both of them. When we got to school at least I was able to summon up the love to wish him a good day.
And that was part two of the morning…