Guys! This is so hard! But so important.
Roo has been taking serious, giant steps toward managing her diabetes totally independently.
Below you will see almost the entire exchange between Roo and myself while she was at cheer camp for three nights and four days. I know it looks long! But it's
not considering every fiber of my being wants to hang on with bloody, shredded fingernails.
Here are her BGs:
172, 265, 188, 117, 150, 136
163, 90, 201, 208, 93, 321
407, 198, 68, 101, 135, 239, 242
211, 234, 77, 114, 159, 359, 305, 126, 88, 239
I think these look great!! She had never done an intensive camp like this on MDI on top of managing mostly on her own. However, when we were talking about it after she got home the first words out of her mouth were "I feel kind of ashamed..." NO! NO! NO! Oh my god, she felt ashamed because she didn't count carbs and really pay attention as well as she could have. Oh baby! You did fantastic!
I
HATE that she felt like this. I tried to nip this in the bud right away but I don't know how much got through. I told her how good she did in a difficult environment. How she'll get better and better with more practice. She kept herself safe, had a majority of BGs within and close to the target we set for the camp and was able to participate fully in the event. Look how many times she checked her blood sugar. I call that a success! We went over some things that stuck out that she could work on: over treating of lows, better carb counting and more consistent bolusing.
I know that letting them experience independence and making mistakes is important for learning and this experience really drove this home for me, made a dent in the d-mom emotional side. Because she was in charge, she was more invested in the results. Because she was making the decisions, she was able to identify the problems really quickly during the review (and really while they were happening).
Watching Roo take on this challenge and hearing her reflections also surfaced some heartbreak for me. The burden and disruptive nature of Type 1 Diabetes was impossible to tuck away in its corner where I normally try to keep it.
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