Diabetes Diabetes Diabetes

Still feeling somewhat under the weather. It was hard just
pulling myself out of bed this morning to go into work. I just feel beaten on.
My nose has stopped dripping, however, and that helps.  My poor husband had to get back to work today
and I know that had to have been tough. After a week of traveling and luxury,
restaurants and European touring, the boring life of toil has to have been a
let down. I know it’s always tough for me to get back on track after a
vacation, especially when I don’t have something else to look forward to in the
horizon.

My son had an appointment with the pediatric endocrinology
nurse this afternoon and much to our dismay his A1C level was even WORSE than
last time.  I was particularly upset
because it’s so hard to get him to change his infusion set when his blood
glucose is high.  You see, he uses an
insulin pump to control his diabetes. (For those of you who somehow missed it
in previous entries, my son has juvenile or type I diabetes. As I have
explained in several entries, this is quite different than type II diabetes in
that it is a basically an immune disorder where one’s antibodies attack one’s
own pancreas – islets of langerhans to be exact, to the point where it cannot
produce the insulin needed by the body. 
It is genetic and cannot be avoided by diet or exercise as opposed to
the more common type II diabetes which is a complication with one’s cells.  In type II a person produces insulin but the
cells are unable to use it properly. 
This can often be controlled by improved diet and exercise.  Type II diabetes can also be genetic. That is
your diabetes education for the day.) 
Anyway, the pump is like a mini-IV, it holds a small vial of insulin basically
and that insulin is pumped into my son’s system at a programmed rate every few
seconds.  It is pumped in via some tubing
called an infusion set which should really be changed every couple of days and
the site where the insulin is infused needs to be rotated constantly.  My son is kind of lazy and also likes to sort
of do things the same way all the time. Consequently he doesn’t change the
infusion set as often as he should and he doesn’t vary the site as broadly as
he should.  He also grazes on food
without taking extra insulin (which is very easy when you have a pump because you
just press a few extra buttons and get an extra dose of insulin called a
“bolus.”)  Anyway, I sort of nag him to
do these things and he constantly blows me off. He ends up then when all these
high blood glucose levels.  It gets so
frustrating to me.  So this, along with
being sick, which he has been, caused his A1C level to go up instead of get
lower since his last exam and they were very upset with his last exam. 

Since he’s older, he basically meets with her by himself,
but I could overhear her telling him the same stuff that I’ve been telling him.
We’ll see if it helps at all.  We
discussed it a little more in the car.  I
just get very scared because with his A1C, he could be looking.. no, he WILL be
looking at foot amputation, blindness, kidney failure, maybe all three or more,
perhaps death by the time he’s my age. There’s really no question about it.
That’s the way diabetes complications are. Unfortunately, adolescents often
respond this way because they feel so invulnerable and because high blood glucose
doesn’t FEEL like it’s hurting you when it’s happening. The effects are
insidious.  In order to avoid these side
effects you need to keep your A1C at 7 or below and his just crept up to over
9.  It’s very scary.  And he just acts annoyed with whoever is
trying to advise him to adjust his lifestyle. This drives me out of my mind but
I don’t know what to do.

I think my husband wants to help but doesn’t get actively
involved. At this point, however, I think he is going to have to get really
super involved because my husband is the only person my son really listens to
and even he can’t penetrate sometimes. 
My husband gets so scared of my son’s low blood sugars and doesn’t worry
as much about his highs but that paradigm really has to change.  The lows can be scary because we’ve had to
deal with seizures from that in the past, but those seizures are really less
dangerous at this point than the highs to be truthful.  They’re just scarier, that’s all. It’s so
unlikely, however, for my son to have a seizure because he always feels the
lows coming on, especially during the day and he hasn’t had one for several
years, so I think we really need to focus on attacking these highs. 

Anyway, it’s really tough. I hate diabetes but, at the same
time, when I see us teetering on the brink of an army draft, I’m glad he’s got
it because I know he won’t be drafted then.

So, after the nurse visit, we headed out for his guitar
lessons then back home to fix lunches for the week and dinner.  Finally it was time to relax and watch 24
(which I love) then log in and catch up with everybody’s diary (including my
own!)

My boss was sick today (not to change the subject too
abruptly).  He left early having caught
the cold we’ve been passing around for awhile. 
I’m still sick, my mind seems to be roasted. I was busy making all sorts
of weird mistakes.  I’m tired and feeling
somewhat overwhelmed by things that would ordinarily be easy.  I’ve been eating chocolate so I refuse to
weigh myself. Ugh… But I’m not really depressed or anything, too brain dead to
be depressed. 

Yeah…. My husband is yelling at my son for eating without
testing his blood sugar. Now THAT is what I like to hear. I know that sounds so
mean. But we have GOT to present a united front on this. If we love him we have
got to stay on him until it becomes habit and he really takes care of himself.
It’s too hard for just one of us to do it; it has got to be both of us.  Well… that’s our problem for the day/our
lives. And how are things with YOU?