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J didn’t have his first sleepover until he was in 5th grade. Why I agreed to let B go on his first sleepover at the tender age of 9 is completely beyond me.
He has these giant, gorgeous brown eyes. I’m a sucker for the eyes. I swear when he asked me he looked exactly like this…
As I was driving to meet B after school with his suitcase...I pondered, (with my obvious lack of sane reasoning)…B will be celebrating five years with diabetes this year. He has officially, this month, approached the point where he has lived more life with diabetes than without. He is my responsible one…he always remembers to bolus for dinner, if I forget to count the carbs he reminds me. He calls me at lunch everyday…he rarely forgets. He deserves a sleepover dagnabit! (Yeah, apparently I'm an old coal miner when I ponder...)
But no matter how much I reasoned with myself, my heart wasn’t feeling it. Driving to the school was like driving the green mile. All my anxiety came to the surface. It was like diabetes was sitting in the passenger seat insisting I pay attention to its tantrums. It wouldn’t shut up! It kept screaming in my ear…lalalalalalala…I tried so hard to tune it all out!
I hate it when I have to think about diabetes. I hate to have to think about the walls and complications it surrounds me with. No matter how ready B was for this sleepover, diabetes was going to make it complicated. And it didn’t help that he was having lows again lately.
The lows we had a couple week ago preceded a “false start” sleepover. He was supposed to spend the night at this friends then, but at the very last minute, his friend’s father got the flu. The two days leading up to this false start B suffered from terrible lows. I changed basals and it seemed to fix everything, but what do you know…two days before this new sleepover date, the lows returned.
Excited much?
It was all he could think about. All he could talk about. He and his friend spent every minute they could planning the fun they would have. So I did what any mom with an itchy trigger finger would do…I lowered every one of his basal rates across the board before he left for school that morning. Let him be high! Keep him safe I say!
So when I finally made it to school after a ride that I swear felt like 5 hours…I checked B before leaving him and found a “lovely” 62 in front of me. Some juice and a FREE 40 carb carrot muffin at his friends found him to be 88 at dinner. UGH. Would the fun EVER end! He ate out with the family and had ice cream after and called me at bedtime with a 270. I gave him half the correction the pump suggested and let him go to sleep.
He said he woke up the next morning feeling low. He said he ate a pack of Yogos that were by his bedside and then checked himself an hour later. He was 200 at this time. Was he low? Who knows…but I’m proud of him for taking the initiative and listening to his body. It was precisely the reason I let him go on this adventure. Well, that…and his little boy’s mother is a sweetheart. I knew she would take great care in making sure all was well with B.
This was one of those times. One of many that I just held my breath and jumped. B was armed with a cell phone in his pocket, (which I called three times and texted twice,) a blood sugar monitor clipped to his belt loop, a bag of Yogos in his pocket and juice in his suitcase. I gave his friend’s mother a piece of paper with our phone numbers, a list of times he needed to check his sugar, and another list of times when he needed to call me. I also wrote out these words, "Under 100 is a low, he needs to eat a snack. Over 20o, he is high and needs insulin. Don't be afraid to call me! :)" That is the extent of it all.
It is never as easy as it sounds, but the smile on B’s face when I picked him up made it so worth it. He proudly exclaimed as he jumped in the car that they should do that “every weekend.”
Yeah, these 20 grey hairs I grew this weekend don’t need friends buddy. His friend can stay at our house next time.
But I did it. He did it. We did it.
I’m exhaling as I write.
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