In Which It Is World Diabetes Day, and Diabetes Wants to Make Sure I Don't Forget It

Today is World Diabetes Day. The date was chosen to commemorate the birthday of Dr. Frederick Banting, a physician and scientist from Canada who led the team that discovered and refined insulin in 1921. Before that, type 1 diabetes was inevitably a death sentence. A few revolutionary doctors were keeping patients alive for months and sometimes even a few years on a near starvation diet. The only such patients who didn't eventually starve to death were those who were kept alive through this treatment long enough to benefit from the discovery of insulin.

Nearly three years into diabetes, it most often feels like a routine to us. There are days when we do everything right and Kittygirl's blood sugar stays in range all the time or only goes slightly out of range a handful of times.

However, there are still plenty of times when we really have no idea what we're doing and we make the same kinds of mistakes we made early on. One of those mistakes happened this morning.

Kittygirl and Mr. Engineer went to a fun event at her school last night that included a bake sale. They brought home some sugar cookies made by a mom who has her own cottage bakery and whose cookies are amazing. Due to me making another mistake yesterday afternoon in dosing a cookie for a birthday treat at Girl Scouts, Kittygirl's blood sugar had been high for most of the afternoon and was just coming back into range when the cookie was purchased. We told her she'd have to wait until today to eat it.

I'm not quite sure why I agreed to this, but Kittygirl somehow negotiated having the cookie with breakfast, instead of one of the two pieces of toast she most often has. She also always has fruit and sausage, in case you're aghast at that lack of balance in a breakfast consisting of two pieces of toast :).

I know exactly how to dose insulin for toast. If there are no other mitigating factors, I can keep Kittygirl's blood sugar in range with her typical breakfast. I thought I could do it with the cookie as well, but I was wrong.

By the time I dropped her off at school, Kittygirl's blood sugar was nearly 300. I gave her a little extra insulin, and she was back in range within an hour. It wasn't a disaster, but it was really annoying. I'm not a fan of these little reminders diabetes gives me that my skills are not equal to those of a pancreas, and in fact that often they're really pathetic in comparison.

We realized when we got to school that Kittygirl forgot the shoes she needed for Girls on the Run this afternoon, so I decided to come in for lunch and bring the shoes with me. I was glad I did, because, as she opened her container of goldfish crackers, Kittygirl managed to knock it off the table and spill all the crackers onto the floor.

Because she gets insulin for lunch beforehand, Kittygirl needed to replace the 20 carbs that the goldfish represented. If all else failed she could have done it with fast acting sugars from her supply bag, but that would be less than ideal. I scanned the lunch tray of the friend who was eating with us and calculated that her roll was about 20 carbs.

I took Kittygirl with me into the hot lunch line, explained the situation to the supervisor, and asked if we could have a roll. He graciously gave us one and the situation was saved. I'm not sure what Kittygirl would have done if I hadn't been there and she had spilled her goldfish. We need to have a conversation about how to problem solve in such a situation after she gets home.

I'm always aware of diabetes, of course. Even when everything is going well, diabetes is constant background noise in our lives. However, there are times, like the two situations today, when diabetes makes me extra aware.