95

So tonight I went out for coffee again with a friend. the past three days have been good. we have adjusted her insulin to help with her lows. she is still having some highs at midnight, in the 400's highs but I would rather her be really high than really low. so we are watching to decide how to fix that.

so I felt good leaving tonight and actually putting my phone in my purse, next to me on the cushioned bench. Last night, I had my phone in my pocket so I would be sure to feel it when it rang if I was needed, but tonight I felt confident to ignore my phone for one hour in the coffee house with a good friend.

She asked me how things were going and shared how things were going in her life. She is the friend that I mentioned before that lost a daughter to cancer years ago. She has had three more children since then and a lot of her conversation now is about homework and after school activities and extended family. She sat sympathetically listening to my stories of just getting through the day. just trying to keep three other small children entertained while I checked my diabetic daughter's sugar levels and counted and recounted her carbs.

I recently was looking in a variety of cookbooks for sale at a book store and was enticed by the photos. I contemplated a diabetic cookbook but ironically every recipe either didn't have the nutritional information for each recipe or it had lots of extraneous information for a type 1 diabetic. It seems to me that most diabetic cookbooks are aimed at type 2 diabetics that need to control their symptoms with their diet. type 1 again is all about carbs and insulin. that's pretty much it. and sugar. we have to avoid anything where its sugar count is more than half of the carb total.

I also allowed myself to thumb through some beautiful baking cookbooks. page after page of biscottis and lemon cookies and brownies and muffins. I love to bake. I love just sitting with a cup of tea and biscotti to munch on and browse through beautiful cookbooks getting knew ideas of food normally reserved for elegant restaurants that can now be made in your own kitchen! However now, my daughter could not eat any of these. Can I secretly bake at 10 pm and eat all my goodies before 7 am? Or could I substitute stevia for sugar and somehow calculate all of the carbs in an almond cookie for her to enjoy? I began to feel slightly sadistic debating buying a cookbook full of food that my daughter could no longer eat and reluctantly put the book back down.

so back to the coffee shop. My friend sat sympathizing with me regarding my struggles and it almost seemed as if she was trying hard to understand how difficult my days have been. She asked if I have time to do dishes? no. Do I do the laundry? some of it. How's church? good, but I was in the nursery Sunday, so missed it. How is she with her shots? good.

She was trying to understand but until you become completely submersed in this life it is hard to fully understand the silent responsibility that you carry everywhere you go. the bathroom, the garage, the store, the bedroom. If she is out of sight, she could drop to a low and I would need to find her, check her, and administer smarties.

The other day I was looking back on some old photos from the past year. I saw our Halloween photos. Everyone lined up in costume, each carrying a bucket full of candy. That night we had gone to an event at our church and then on the way home, we let them eat candy as we drove. four pieces, five pieces, six pieces. How many sugar carbs would that have been? we could have killed her driving home that night. I don't think she was diabetic yet, back in October, but that will be the last time she will ever be able to do that.

what amazes me about my friend is that her life is fairly normal now and she had to put some understanding into her repetoire for diabetes because she had never dealt with diabetes before. yet, she is the one that I respect and admire for she traveled down the cancer road years ago and bore much more than I had ever endured. She had to learn to trust God completely As Abraham had done when he had sacrificed Isaac. My friend has an amazing testimony for how God took care of her family when they walked the journey of a sick child and countless hospital stays.

I feel she is so above me in grace and suffering that I could never measure upto yet years later her life has already changed focus now to everyday life again. Never forgotten and always mentioned but yet her life has moved forward.

One day too, I suppose diabetes will be a second language for us. A story ready to share but our focus will once again be on homework and chuck e cheese again, rather than testing and carbs and lows and highs.

When I got in my car again after leaving the coffee house, I decided I should check my phone, just in case.

I had five missed calls. all from the same number.

my heart sank.

how could I have been so cavalier to want to enjoy coffee uninterrupted? I immediately called my husband. "what's the matter!?" "Is she okay?!" my husband said that she was 95 at bedtime, what should he do?

That's it? 95. that's not under 70. Give her a snack and put her to bed. In the same tone of voice the doctor would talk to me when I would call panicked with my daughter reading at a 79. The doctor would matter of factly say, "she's not under 70. just give her a snack."

so, already I was becoming jaded. 95 was no longer an emergency. don't call me unless she is grey and 45. three weeks later, already. used to a 95.

so now I must go and check some homework for my eldest.

Life does go on.