graduations

We had a busy week last week. We had prom, senior awards night, kindergarten graduation, high school graduation, grad night, grad party, and ended the week with family photos.

I was pleased looking back, that we survived all of it! I was nervous taking our whole family to several of these events but it all went well.

we had family come visit from out of town. Our daughter was awarded two awards for her senior year. Even though she felt like an underachiever at her amazing school! This year, her school had five valedictorians because they all tied with 4.9 gpa's!

One child down, four to go as someone said. but we are not done. she will still be here next year attending the junior college with hopes to transfer to her university the following year. and I don't think I will ever write my child off as "done" anyways! we are all works in progress even if just over a cup of coffee and scones to assess the wisdom of her next decision.

my kindergartener is finally ready for first grade. we had her do two years. she was a year younger than the others the first time around so now she is really ready for the challenge of writing extensive papers and coloring inside the lines.

we are getting used to traveling with our youngest diabetic daughter. she made it through several events with her petunia pickle bottom toddler bag packed with granola bars and apple juice, insulin in an insulated bag and needles, the big scary emergency shot and her lifeline: the meter.

she was able to indulge in ice cream topped with gummy worms, sprinkles, and chocolate syrup after the kindergarten ceremony. I liberally guessed 20 carbs or naively and gave her half a unit of insulin to cover the extravagant lunch time snack. But she survived. we came home and had lunch and adjusted her and off to rest time. No one even commented on the shot being given to her in the midst of the celebration.

At the highschool graduation, our sweetie became more restless as the ceremony allowed for many speeches and award announcements and no promise of ice cream immediately following the ceremony. Only a stroller ride back to her uncle's house who conveniently lives across the street from where we were. (free and convenient parking).

we gave her a granola bar in the gym to hold her off until we got home and later at home she had some party food (chips?) I don't really remember after the blur of our week! What I do remember was bringing her into the kitchen before I formally fed her and remembering to test her. When the meter read "dangerously high, over 600" I completely but calmly, panicked! A guest had just arrived and I said "hold on, I'm paging the doctor! with meter and needle in hand.

The doctor called back promptly and said just correct for over 500. 1 1/2 units of insulin. Now I remember. She had drank a capri sun apple juice from the cooler of party drinks. ( with, obviously no insulin) that's right. the doctor wasn't concerned just said to give her insulin and re check in a while. hang up.

okay then. we did. and she did come down.

so we all survived. we all made it through several new chapters in our lives. three in our family. since january of this year. diabetes. k graduation and a highschool graduate. sassiness in tact.

A very big error

"An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." Orlando A. Battista

My eldest daughter shared this quote with me as we were driving home tonight. She said that this quote is displayed on a poster in one of her classrooms.

The other two quotes that always come to mind are: "Teenagers, leave home now while you still know everything". and "youth is wasted on the young." These two make more and more sense to me the older that I become.

The first quote, however, is very apropo for this evening. It should be posted in a doctor's office or more specifically; an endocronologist's office.

Tonight, my eldest daughter and I were out shopping at Costco with my sister in law and niece. I just happened to set something on my purse in the shopping cart at the time that my cell phone rang. I noticed the vibration and located my phone. My husband was calling.

He said that he had made a mistake. a big mistake. He was supposed to give our little sweetie .5 units of insulin to go with her bedtime snack. He had, however, somehow, managed to give her 4 units.

I explained to my sister in law what this could mean.

Her insulin is supposed to match her carbs that she eats. When she is given way more insulin than what she ate, her blood sugar levels were drop and there is nothing to stop it. She would just keep dropping until she eventually went into a coma.

my first response was "why are you calling me?!?, call the doctor!!" He hung up and paged the doctor while I called our neighbor. He didn't answer at first, but then called back. I told him what had happened and he advised to start giving her apple juice right away. Last I knew, she was in the 200's so we agreed that we had a little bit of time before she started dropping drastically. I told him that I didn't know how he could have over shot that much! from .5 to 4 is quite a mistake. Then I remembered that her Lantus dose is 3.25. I suddenly thought "what if he was thinking he was giving her Lantus instead of her other insulin?? Then I really panicked. I had given her her Lantus dose before I had left. If he doubled up, OH MY GOODNESS!!!!

My neighbor and I agreed to call my husband back, find out about the Lantus and advise him to give her apple juice right away.

When my husband answered the phone, we barely said "Hi" when he hung up on me to take the doctor's call. Wait!! what about the Lantus??? I texted him to find out. I don't know if his phone allows him to read text messages and talk on the phone. (A commercial came to mind. For AT & T ? A man that forgot to make anniversary reservations and corrects his error while talking to his wife on the phone.) Well, my husband needs this phone.

As I'm waiting for my husband's reply, my daughter informs me that I have texted her by mistake. argh!!! So she resends the message to my husband. meanwhile, I try calling him back and he answers again. This time, he said that he had talked to the doctor and our neighbor had taken it upon himself to walk over to our house and help in this time of need. Praise God!

The doctor had advised that he start feeding her smarties and apple juice. They calculated that she needed atleast 80 carbs to try to counteract all of the insulin. At the moment they were handling the crisis and NO he had not given her more lantus. thank goodness.

so for the moment, I was able to try to focus on groceries and cheesecake samples again.

As we were finishing our errands at one more store, I called my husband back to see how things were going now. He said that our neighbor had gone home. They had actually contemplated watching a soccer game on television in the midst of this drama. Our sweetie was in bed now and falling asleep. Her numbers were in the upper 200's at the moment. However we still had another hour to go until that insulin had worked its way through her body. Everything sounded under control and I said I would see him at home.

When we got home, I sent my husband to get the groceries and I went to check on our sweetie. I checked her and she was 145 now.

My husband fixed some milk for her to drink but she didn't want to wake up and drink it. I went and fixed a cup of apple juice to try that. I figured apple juice now is better than glucogon later.

She didn't want much of anything but a blanky to snuggle with. I tried again with the milk and she finally drank about 1/3 of a cup. We checked her again a little while later and she was upto 179.

I felt good enough to head back to our groceries waiting for us all of over the kitchen counter.

I come out to find the pizza that I had just bought and put in the oven all over the floor. My husband had dropped it and was preparing to cook another one for me. He had tried to take it out of the oven and dropped it. He knew he had used his "get out of jail free" card already and he did not want anymore wrath for a fallen pizza. I silently decided to offer him grace for the pizza mistake.

I had already shared my thoughts on the insulin mistake.

As Anne Shirley was once told "Every day is brand new, with no mistakes in it yet." Anne took this to heart and was encouraged as she had lost her best friend due to her horrible mistake of innocently serving alcohol to her underage friend for an afternoon snack instead of a cordial.

Anne knew better than anybody how innocent mistakes could have disasterous effects. Her romantic ideas and daydreams and temper (stubborn nature), led her to many mistakes. green hair, a drunk best friend, an angry neighbor. writing her name on the classroom board 100 times.

But we love Anne all the more for her mistakes.

But how does Anne's endearing qualities translate to my husband and a diabetic daughter? The error was caught before it became a mistake. It was corrected and hopefully some sort of lesson was learned from this.

Read the bottle before you dye your hair. Check the syringe before you inject. and put on oven mitts when retrieving hot objects from the oven.

Oh, and use a spatula when flipping quesadillas in hot pans. My teenager was retrieving freezer items the whole costco trip due to burned finger tips from dinner she made. She claimed that I had told her to use her fingers to retrieve the hot tortilla instead of a utensil.

Crazy teenager delusion because I never make mistakes.

I personally wanted my hair green.