January 10, 2016: A Diabetic Family

While in the hospital I had to meet with a nutritionist to "help" me find healthy diet choices for Duncan. She told me that parents don't realize the life changes that come with a child who is diagnosed with diabetes. I kind of waved her off. We were healthy eaters to begin with, my husband likes his junk food occasionally but for the most part we don't keep it in the house. I was taught to cook from scratch, I know how to use noodles to make mac-n-cheese with real cheese and milk, I love cooking beef stew in my crock pot, and I never use the prepackaged stuff. I find it to be very fattening, high calories and it just doesn't fill my boys' stomach. I already used whole wheat noodles instead of white noodles and brown rice over white rice. So our eating habits didn't really change too much.

The only thing that really changed for us was eating the holiday candy in front of Duncan, and portions. My kids are still growing so I never really paid attention to how much they ate, as long as they were eating enough. Now I have to keep track of EVERYTHING Duncan puts into his mouth. Last night we had a good dinner, and I gave him the insulin he needed to cover it. He woke up two or three times screaming like he was in pain. At first I thought something was really wrong, I had just recently read and article of a little girl who recently died because she swallowed a penny battery. My thought raced through every thing he at yesterday, and maybe things he could have picked up on the floor that I just didn't see... I remembered that we don't even have penny batteries in the house. I stuck his sippy cup in his mouth and he started drinking the water, laid his head back down on the pillow and went back to sleep. About an hour later he woke up screaming again. I went in to see if he needed more water and checked his blood sugar this time, he was in the 300's no wonder he was miserable. I've gone on record as saying I'd rather deal with highs than deal with lows which is true, but I still get stressed out when he's too high. He woke up again an hour later so I was back and forth most of the night

I remember when my husband and I went to our basic training class in October, one of the nurses told a story about a mom who had two daughters that both had type 1:
"Her 8 year old came in with a blood sugar in the 400's, and I asked her what she had for breakfast that morning. The little girl turned to me and said "Cocoa Puffs" I looked at the mom and said to her "Why would you give your daughter Cocoa Puffs for breakfast when you know she's diabetic?" The mom looked at me and said "I didn't give them to her, the Cocoa Puffs are mine, she just found where I was hiding them." I said to her "you really shouldn't keep that kind of thing in the house with both of you children dealing with diabetes" the mom looked right back at me and said "I don't see why I have to suffer just because She's the one who has diabetes..." I was shocked. About a week later both of her daughters were in the hospital with high blood sugars, and as I walked into the room to greet them this same mother threw her arms around me and started to cry. "I don't know how this could have happened" she said "you know more than anyone that I would do ANYTHING for my daughters!" I couldn't hold it back any longer, I had to be taken off their case because I just started screaming."

This story really shocked me. I felt bad for those kids, but most of all it made me realize how important it is to eat clean with Duncan in the house. He's still a toddler so he's getting into everything as it is, I don't want to end up in the hospital for four days again, because I was too selfish to keep snack foods around the house. We all know as a woman it's hard not to store chocolate around the house for when you're dealing with stress.... but that is something I am definatly working on.