Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Time to Eat Mor Chikin again!

Once again, our local Chick-fil-a will be doing a fundraiser for Team Elise!  If you live in the area and can come out, the big day will be on Thursday, August 9th from 6 until 8 pm at the Chick-fil-a on 2301 E Southlake Blvd in Southlake, TX.

Each year we've done this, we've had over 100 people come out to help support Team Elise, and we'd love to see you there!

Thanks again to Tracy and her wonderful team at Chick-fil-a Southlake...

... And go Team Elise!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Let's get ready to endo!

The title of this post really works better if you envision that boxing announcer guy calling it out and really dragging you the "endo" part.

If it's not quite clear, today we had our quarterly endo battle... Er, appointment. I should stop here and say, it's not the doc I do battle with during these visits... It's life. Something always seems to go wrong. The doc is great. We love her.

The good:
  • I remembered to print up the pump logs AND bring them. Not like last time. Three months later and I'm still ticked at myself about that!
  • We left the house 10 minutes before the appointment and three minutes later we were in the parking lot (love the satellite office!)
  • I found an iPhone AND a deposit envelope full of cash in the waiting room.
  • A1C was 6.4.
The bad:
  •  I couldn't get the logs to print up properly. The information from today wouldn't download.
  • The moment we walked into that place, Mattias started to scream. And continued to scream anytime someone in scrubs would even look at him. Oy... Someone has issues.
  • I turned in the money and phone (okay, I'm just joking that this belongs under bad. Do you really think I would have kept it?).
  • While in the exam room, Mattias blew out his diaper. Thankfully, I always carry a change of clothes for him. When I sheepishly asked the nurse if she could dispose of it, she came in with a biohazard bag. It was awesome and made me laugh.
  •  Elise's A1C last time was 6.7. The doc and I agreed that the 6.4 was probably due to a few too many lows. The previous visit she was having very few lows, and that drop frustrates me and makes me want to do better.
All in all, not too bad. Except next time, Mr. Biohazard-in-my-pants will be staying home.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Riddle me this...

Why, when we do an unscheduled pod change at 2 am, does Elise require no increased temp basal to offset the post-change highs?

But if we do a pod change during the day, we have to temp basal as much as 75% for over four hours just to keep her in range?

Why must you be such a pain-in-the-ass diabetes?

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Summer Camp

For us, sending Elise to a summer camp was a very far off dream. I'm not talking about diabetes camp, but your ordinary, run-of-the-mill day camp that a lot of parents send their kids to during the summer; filling their days with art, science, gymnastics, and other fun activities.

At least, parents of kids that DON'T have type 1 diabetes.

Somehow Elise heard of these day camps, and had been bugging me to put her in one. I remember going to them as a kid and loved it. So much so that when I aged out, I became a Leader-in-Training; earning a cool $50 a week at the age of 12.

But I just didn't see how it was possible. Most of these camps featured a snack AND lunch. Plus running around. And 100 degree weather. And people who haven't a clue about diabetes.

So you can see why these camps weren't even a possibility for us. Until Elise's pre-school teacher from last year (who totally rocks BG checks and bolusing) told us that she would be helping out with the summer camp that would be held at the pre-school, and would Elise like to come?

Ummmm, yes please!

Elise completed her first week last week and had an amazing time. She came home every afternoon just bubbling over with excitement. Her favorite thing? Getting to eat lunch there. She has always wanted to stay for "lunch bunch" after her pre-school class, but we never did it... I was just unwilling to let go of that control.

She loved it so much that we signed her up for the second week. The theme of the camp is "Busy Town"... Businesses come in and teach the kids all about what they do. One day last week they had a pizza place come in and teach the kids how to make their own pizza. We rocked the pizza.

This week? A donut store will come in on Wednesday. They get to make donuts and bring them home. We've never done donuts before. You know what? Bring it on... We totally got this.

Summer camp... Yet another step on the journey of letting go.


Elise in her dance recital costume from a few months ago - too cute not to share!

Thursday, July 12, 2012

One day it will be funny, right?

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you know one day you'll look back and laugh, but while you are in it you are afraid to even leave your house out of fear of what might come next? Yeah... it was one of those.

Starting with some jackwagon that hit our car leaving $1200 worth of damage and took off during fireworks on the 4th of July. And the rest of the week was peppered with dog vomit on the carpet, broken vacuums, Fred getting pulled over for speeding (let go with a warning, thank goodness), one of our children peeing on the sofa, surgery times 2, and Fred's Dad having to go to the ER last Friday. Which meant Fred's Mom wasn't able to fly out and help out after I had my surgery. Thankfully, Fred's Dad is okay.

Wait. Did you catch the surgery times 2 part? Yeah, about that...

Last Thursday, Mattias came running into the kitchen at lunchtime with two of those "button" batteries in his mouth. Horrified, I scooped them out, and knowing full well that they usually came in groups of three I asked him if he had eaten one.

To which he replied, "Glungh!" (This means yes in his strange little language he has concocted).

I went into the playroom, hoping to make a liar out of him, when I found the flashlight he had gotten into, removing the batteries that for some reason struck him as something that would make tasty snack. Sure enough, there was enough room for three batteries. I scoured the room and came up empty.

So I packed the kids up and headed to the ER, picking up Fred along the way. One x-ray, three nurses and four doctors later, they discover that he did, indeed eat the battery, and required an endoscopy to remove it ASAP.

I need to interject here that Mattias HATES anything and everything that has to do with anything remotely medical. Seriously, he CRIES when we pull into the parking lot of his doctor. He came with me to an OB appointment and started yelling, "NO! NO! NO!" when the nurse came into the exam room. He hides at the sight of scrubs. He's a little on the dramatic side.

Anyway, anytime someone with a stethoscope would even look at him, he would start to shriek. The worst was holding him down for the IV before they took him off to the OR. As they took him away on the gurney, he turned around and gave me one last pleading look and moaned, "Maaaaaaamaa!"

My heart? Shattered. Little tiny pieces on the floor.

Ninety minutes later he was back in my arms, reeking of vomit (he had thrown up in the OR) and totally agitated from the anesthesia.  I couldn't believe when they handed me the battery and I saw that after only about 3-4 hours inside of Mattias, it had started to corrode.  Scary stuff.



As bad as it was, there are still blessings to be found.  I am very thankful that Mattias had come to me with the batteries still in his mouth.  Otherwise, I never would had known that he had swallowed anything.  It could have been so much worse than what actually happened.  The next day he was back to his normal, crazy self. 

I am also thankful that D decided to behave itself during this crisis, and the days following my surgery.  For once, it flew under the radar and really was a non-issue.

And through it all, Elise was incredible. She helped to comfort Mattias when he was scared and was so great at the hospital that all the staff kept telling us how amazing she is.

Yeah, she is pretty super...


... But I already knew that!

Edited to add: tonight Mattias fell into some bushes and right onto a fire ant hill.  He ended up with over 50 bites all over his body.  Seriously universe... What the frak?

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Surgery Update

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to those of you who emailed and texted me well-wishes for my surgery.  Everything went well and even though I'm still sore and tired, I'm feeling good.  We've had a pretty crazy couple of days (stories to come... you don't want to miss what Mattias did), and I am so ready for life to be back to normal around here.


Or at least our version of normal.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Things I learned from diabetes this month: June edition

-There are some great companies out there, quietly doing some wonderful things for our kids... one of them being Hawaiian Falls.  A few weeks ago we learned that they were doing a Champions Day; where they'd open the water park early and have a two hour time period set aside for kids with special needs.  The kids were admitted free, and any other family member got in for just $5.  We were then allowed to spend as long as we wanted at the park for the rest of the day.  Elise is such a little dare devil and had a blast!  Unfortunately, we learned about it the night before it happened and weren't able to spread the word to our other D-Peeps, but I hope they do it again next year.  Thanks Hawaiian Falls!

-Elise LOVES the spotlight!  We were asked to take part in a photoshoot for some specially made superhero capes, and she put on quite the performance.  I loved watching her enthusiastic antics as she ran around trying to show off just how super she is.  Even more fun?  We got to hang out with Super Nate!  Here's a sneak peak of the dynamic duo's cuteness:


Thanks to our photographer extraordinaire, Tressa Thomas, and to Superkid Capes.  Elise was allowed to keep her outfit and slept in it that night.

-My baby girl really isn't my baby girl anymore.  I saw that a bunch of D-Moms of toddlers were having a get-together and it dawned on me... we no longer fit into that group.  But I am amazed and so proud to watch how she is growing, especially when it comes to her diabetes.  She now not only checks her own BG and boluses herself, but she likes to figure out the carb counts as well.  She's pretty good... when she has a banana, she's generally only off by 1 - 2g of carbs.  Where did my baby go???

Sunday, July 1, 2012

With glowing hearts...

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian peeps!



From your favourite Canucks hiding out south of the border.