Hello win column

I have learned that diabetes is crazy mix of disappointments and victories. I don't like the word disappointment, but I like the word failure even less, so disappointment it is.

I try not to take the disappointments personally, but I hate when I guess a snack amount wrong. Or over/undershoot a carb amount to bring up a low. Or get the carb/insulin ratio wrong. Or I try a new recipe, carefully counting out all the carbs, and it ends up shooting Elise's BG through the roof for no apparent reason. Or I miss a low... the list could go on forever.

But I savour the victories. Perhaps it's the disappointment to victory ratio that makes them that much sweeter, but I swear if those victories could manifest themselves as a dewy meadow, I would run barefoot through them. No, naked. AND barefoot.

We had one such victory the other day when we went over to a friends house for dinner. I make probably THE best cheese fondue ever (and I'm so modest about it too!), and I love making it for my friends. Of course, these days, my house really needs to be declared a state of emergency, so hosting is out of the question.

So I took my fondue set on the road and went to work creating my dish of cheesy goodness. When it came time to eat, their kids joined in, but Elise had already eaten her dinner about 90 minutes prior. Of course she was curious as to what was going on, and REALLY wanted to take part in the "dip dip".

Fred and I just looked at each other, tired of all the crap that comes with diabetes. You could tell we were just worn out because we just shrugged our shoulders at each other and told Elise to "have at it". Although we just let her dip the apples and kept the bread out of her reach. No matter, she was happy.

Following the cheese, our hosts decided to break out some chocolate fondue. Again, we just looked at each other and said, "if she wants it, let's let her have it." The interesting part was we never even checked her. I think we were just so burned out at diabetes running our lives, we figured we'd deal with the repercussions of a high BG later.

After all this "extra" food, we figured her BG was going to be uber-high, but when we checked it at her snack time (about an hour after we ate), she rang in at 108. Whaaaaaaat? So we gave her her normal snack and insulin. She went off to play with our friends' kids until we left at about 11:00 pm.

When we got home we decided to check her one more time, and she was 129. I think we learned a valuable lesson that night. We can try like crazy to "control" Elise's diabetes, do everything "right", but it doesn't always work out as planned. Then there are the times we throw caution to the wind and sometimes it all works out, with no explanation as to why.

I believe we need to find the balance between the two, and firmly plant ourselves there. Living in either extreme is not good for my soul. The tricky part is figuring out what it looks like for us.

I'm happy to say that after a year and a half, we just might have found a place in which we can rest.