1 year ago
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
We came, we saw, we walked
I wish I had the time and energy to do this post the justice it deserves. Let's just say the last few days have been completely crazy and emotionally draining.
With all that I have, I want to thank each of the 119 people that came out and walked with and for Team Elise. It's with tears that I look at the photo below and see each of you wearing my daughter's beautiful face on your shirt.
Along with the 119 people, we have raised just under $15,000 so far, with more coming in. But it's not the money that I want to focus on at this moment.
When you read how many people walked with us, did you just rush by it? Let me write it one more time.
119.
That is 119 people that got up early and gave up their Saturday morning to come walk with us. Most of them I knew. Some I didn't know at all. Some came all the way from Australia and gave up part of their vacation to walk with us.
119.
It still blows me away, and let me tell you why.
Elise doesn't "get" money. Actually, numbers really have little meaning to her at all at 4 years old. But when she could look around and take in the sea of blue that surrounded her on Saturday, THAT said something to her.
"Are all these people here for me Momma?" she asked.
"Yes baby, they are. What do you think of that?"
"That is so amazing. Team Elise is amazing!"
Amazing.
Edited to add: All the credit for such an incredible turn-out goes to my husband Fred. Seriously, it is unbelievable the amount of work he put into this year's walk. He too, is pretty amazing.
With all that I have, I want to thank each of the 119 people that came out and walked with and for Team Elise. It's with tears that I look at the photo below and see each of you wearing my daughter's beautiful face on your shirt.
Along with the 119 people, we have raised just under $15,000 so far, with more coming in. But it's not the money that I want to focus on at this moment.
When you read how many people walked with us, did you just rush by it? Let me write it one more time.
119.
That is 119 people that got up early and gave up their Saturday morning to come walk with us. Most of them I knew. Some I didn't know at all. Some came all the way from Australia and gave up part of their vacation to walk with us.
119.
It still blows me away, and let me tell you why.
Elise doesn't "get" money. Actually, numbers really have little meaning to her at all at 4 years old. But when she could look around and take in the sea of blue that surrounded her on Saturday, THAT said something to her.
"Are all these people here for me Momma?" she asked.
"Yes baby, they are. What do you think of that?"
"That is so amazing. Team Elise is amazing!"
Amazing.
Edited to add: All the credit for such an incredible turn-out goes to my husband Fred. Seriously, it is unbelievable the amount of work he put into this year's walk. He too, is pretty amazing.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
So I'm pretty much an idiot
I found this post in my drafts folder. It made me laugh and look stupid at the same time. May it give you a laugh and make you feel better about yourself.
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About two weeks before the start of school, the new teacher came to our house to meet Elise and for a rundown on her care. She left with wide eyes, her mouth permanently drawn into a little "o", and no doubt wondering what the crap she had gotten herself into.
I blame myself for closing the show with a little number I like to call, "When glucagon is your Friend."
All that pre-letter smugness is gone. Message received, diabetes, I will try not to become complacent like that again.
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I've been reading a lot of the back-to-school posts with some feelings of smugness. Those feelings have nothing to do with the other bloggers. Rather I had gotten so comfortable with our back-to-school situation that I had left a giant ol' ass-print on it.
And now it is my turn to freak out.
It started with a letter we received in the mail from Elise's pre-school teacher, Miss A. "Wait a minute," I said to myself, "Elise doesn't have a teacher named Miss A. Her teacher is Miss T. The same teacher she had last year. Who knows all the D stuff inside and out."
I'll take a helping of denial with a huge side of crap-on-a-stick.
And now it is my turn to freak out.
It started with a letter we received in the mail from Elise's pre-school teacher, Miss A. "Wait a minute," I said to myself, "Elise doesn't have a teacher named Miss A. Her teacher is Miss T. The same teacher she had last year. Who knows all the D stuff inside and out."
I'll take a helping of denial with a huge side of crap-on-a-stick.
What had happened is that Elise's old teacher, Miss T had unexpectedly decided to not return. The whole thing happened rather quickly, and the school did not have a chance to inform us ahead of time.
About two weeks before the start of school, the new teacher came to our house to meet Elise and for a rundown on her care. She left with wide eyes, her mouth permanently drawn into a little "o", and no doubt wondering what the crap she had gotten herself into.
I blame myself for closing the show with a little number I like to call, "When glucagon is your Friend."
So here I am, with less than a week to go before school, gearing up to become a whirling dervish of angst and crazy; updating Elise's care manual, making new lanyards, stocking an emergency kit, and freaking out that I am going to hand over my baby girl into the hands of someone that has only had a 60 minute crash course on type 1 diabetes.
All that pre-letter smugness is gone. Message received, diabetes, I will try not to become complacent like that again.
Now I'm off to draft her 504 plan... grades k-7.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Come eat dinner with us
One thing about living in the DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) area, there is no shortage of eateries. Unfortunately, most of them are chain restaurants, which are okay... but it gets old after awhile.
One of our favourite places to go on our family date-nights (the only kind of date night around here) is called Garliq, an Italian restaurant with some uber-yummy food. The owner, Nazir, is from New York and uses a lot of his Grandma's recipes. The house salad (with homemade house dressing) is AWESOME. and they even have a gluten-free menu.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because if you live in the metroplex, I'm inviting you to come have dinner with us this Tuesday, September 20 from 5 - 8 pm. Garliq is generously hosting a fundraiser for Team Elise with a percentage of the sales going towards our team.
They are located at:
250 Randol Mill Ave Suite 140
Southlake, Texas 76092
(Sprouts Market Center)
Hope to see you there!
One of our favourite places to go on our family date-nights (the only kind of date night around here) is called Garliq, an Italian restaurant with some uber-yummy food. The owner, Nazir, is from New York and uses a lot of his Grandma's recipes. The house salad (with homemade house dressing) is AWESOME. and they even have a gluten-free menu.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because if you live in the metroplex, I'm inviting you to come have dinner with us this Tuesday, September 20 from 5 - 8 pm. Garliq is generously hosting a fundraiser for Team Elise with a percentage of the sales going towards our team.
They are located at:
250 Randol Mill Ave Suite 140
Southlake, Texas 76092
(Sprouts Market Center)
Hope to see you there!
Friday, September 16, 2011
The fair by the numbers
Today we went to a local fair that we have been going to since we moved to the area. It's close by, family friendly, and FREE if you go before 5 pm on Friday. This was the first time since Elise's dx that we decided to partake of the fair fare; a risky venture to be sure. There were so many unknown carb factors, my head nearly exploded.
So here is how we fared at the fair:
BG at dinnertime: 259 (blurgh - she was a wee bit excited)
Food eaten by Elise: 1 corn on the cob, 1 hotdog, 1 fruit kabob with strawberry and banana; covered in white and milk chocolate, 1/3 of a smoked turkey leg, 4 huge handfuls of cotton candy, 1 small handful of caramel corn, 1 sip of lemonade.
Approximate amount of carbs: I actually stopped counting after the fruit kabob.
Amount of insulin for that carbfest: 2 units u-50, 1 unit u-20 (for her correction).
BG at bedtime: 121
My elation level at how it all worked out (using MDI, no less): through the freaking ROOF!
Of course, now that I've been all braggy-braggerton about it, we'll probably be up all night dealing with some BG craziness. Oh well, I'm going to savour it while it lasts.
So here is how we fared at the fair:
BG at dinnertime: 259 (blurgh - she was a wee bit excited)
Food eaten by Elise: 1 corn on the cob, 1 hotdog, 1 fruit kabob with strawberry and banana; covered in white and milk chocolate, 1/3 of a smoked turkey leg, 4 huge handfuls of cotton candy, 1 small handful of caramel corn, 1 sip of lemonade.
Approximate amount of carbs: I actually stopped counting after the fruit kabob.
Amount of insulin for that carbfest: 2 units u-50, 1 unit u-20 (for her correction).
BG at bedtime: 121
My elation level at how it all worked out (using MDI, no less): through the freaking ROOF!
Of course, now that I've been all braggy-braggerton about it, we'll probably be up all night dealing with some BG craziness. Oh well, I'm going to savour it while it lasts.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
One more thing
Life with diabetes can be overwhelming. With the finger-poking, the blood-testing, insulin injecting, ketone-testing, carb-weighing, nighttime-checking, ratio-adjusting, pump-testing, dexcom-alarming, low/high-fighting... sometimes it can be too much.
But then life offers up that one more thing. And you swear that one more thing is going to break you. And that one more thing sends you off into a stressed-out shame-spiral because you haven't bathed in three days, you just polished off an entire bag of tootsie roll midgets, and you spent most of your afternoon screaming at your kids.
Welcome to my life lately... have I depressed you yet?
Things here have been a steady stream of one more thing. Make that 100 more things. Garage door openers failing. A slab leak. Dexcom going to the great receiver heaven in the sky (that makes #4... if you're keeping track). And a baby who is doing everything in his power to kill you by waking up and screaming 4-5 times a night (for hours at a time). I have resorted to nursing him at least twice during the night because it is the only thing that will get him back to sleep.
It's like I have a newborn again, minus that glorious newborn smell that makes you so high you don't care that you're only getting 60 minutes of sleep a night.
And yes, I have tried every method of getting him back to sleep, including an advil cocktail. Nothing but the boob works.
Typical guy.
Anyway, yesterday I was mired down in a funk of self-pity. Seriously... even my Mom told me to snap out of it. A trip to Target for some retail therapy did nothing.
Sometimes I wonder if diabetes wasn't on my plate, would these things bug me so much? Is it that diabetes has worn me down to a point that I can't deal with issues in other areas of my life? I'm not sure.
But then life offers up that one more thing. And you swear that one more thing is going to break you. And that one more thing sends you off into a stressed-out shame-spiral because you haven't bathed in three days, you just polished off an entire bag of tootsie roll midgets, and you spent most of your afternoon screaming at your kids.
Welcome to my life lately... have I depressed you yet?
Things here have been a steady stream of one more thing. Make that 100 more things. Garage door openers failing. A slab leak. Dexcom going to the great receiver heaven in the sky (that makes #4... if you're keeping track). And a baby who is doing everything in his power to kill you by waking up and screaming 4-5 times a night (for hours at a time). I have resorted to nursing him at least twice during the night because it is the only thing that will get him back to sleep.
It's like I have a newborn again, minus that glorious newborn smell that makes you so high you don't care that you're only getting 60 minutes of sleep a night.
And yes, I have tried every method of getting him back to sleep, including an advil cocktail. Nothing but the boob works.
Typical guy.
Anyway, yesterday I was mired down in a funk of self-pity. Seriously... even my Mom told me to snap out of it. A trip to Target for some retail therapy did nothing.
Sometimes I wonder if diabetes wasn't on my plate, would these things bug me so much? Is it that diabetes has worn me down to a point that I can't deal with issues in other areas of my life? I'm not sure.
Am I the only one?
I do know that today is a new day. Mattias slept through the night for the first time in weeks and has been a little ray of sunshine all day. I survived without the dexcom through the night, and have enjoyed seeing my daughter without any extra accoutrements attached to her. She even went to pre-school without the dexcom; something I never thought I'd let her do.
Yes, those one more things still exist but I think I'm okay for now.
Until another one more thing comes along... but for now I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes:
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.
Yes, those one more things still exist but I think I'm okay for now.
Until another one more thing comes along... but for now I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes:
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.
— Mary Anne Radmacher
Friday, September 9, 2011
A1Cs, pumps and other D stuff
Thanks for all the comments on the last post... that is indeed an omnipod, but we're just doing the saline trial right now. We also have an appointment with Animas next week. We're pretty excited about pumping and I'm glad we waited until Elise was ready. She's been GREAT through the whole process, saying "that wasn't bad at all!" after the omnipod was inserted.
I believe we found the culprit to those sucktacular numbers from last week. Bad insulin. All 4 vials at the same time. Freaking Texas heat.
We raised $417 at the Chick-fil-a fundraiser a few weeks ago... almost 100 people (including a whole bunch of D-families) came out to "Eat Mor Chikin" with us. Thank you to Mark, Tracy and the entire staff at Chick-fil-a Southlake for taking such good care of us!
And I saved the best for last... today was our endo appointment and I knew our A1C would be pretty good; at least as good as the 6.7 from last time. And I was not disappointed... 6.4, our lowest yet!
So that's what has been happening around here... I've pretty much fallen off the face of the earth in terms of blogging and reading/commenting lately. I'm hoping I can catch up with everybody SOON!
I believe we found the culprit to those sucktacular numbers from last week. Bad insulin. All 4 vials at the same time. Freaking Texas heat.
We raised $417 at the Chick-fil-a fundraiser a few weeks ago... almost 100 people (including a whole bunch of D-families) came out to "Eat Mor Chikin" with us. Thank you to Mark, Tracy and the entire staff at Chick-fil-a Southlake for taking such good care of us!
And I saved the best for last... today was our endo appointment and I knew our A1C would be pretty good; at least as good as the 6.7 from last time. And I was not disappointed... 6.4, our lowest yet!
So that's what has been happening around here... I've pretty much fallen off the face of the earth in terms of blogging and reading/commenting lately. I'm hoping I can catch up with everybody SOON!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
The day the beta cells died
Three years ago today, Elise was diagnosed with diabetes.
The call to take her to the hospital came in the middle of her birthday party.
She was 12 months old.
So how did Elise's pancreas celebrate? I think by completely quitting on us. The amount of insulin we have given her over the last few days is incredible.
We gave her TWO shots in the middle of the night. That is unprecedented.
We used full strength to correct her. Also unprecedented.
She spent most of the night in the 400s, only dipping into the mid 200s after a 1/2 unit of full strength.
Today was also her first day of school. She felt awful. She bawled when we left her. She was high the entire morning.
Today I hate diabetes just as much as I did 3 years ago.
The call to take her to the hospital came in the middle of her birthday party.
She was 12 months old.
So how did Elise's pancreas celebrate? I think by completely quitting on us. The amount of insulin we have given her over the last few days is incredible.
We gave her TWO shots in the middle of the night. That is unprecedented.
We used full strength to correct her. Also unprecedented.
She spent most of the night in the 400s, only dipping into the mid 200s after a 1/2 unit of full strength.
Today was also her first day of school. She felt awful. She bawled when we left her. She was high the entire morning.
Today I hate diabetes just as much as I did 3 years ago.
This picture was taken right before Elise's diagnosis. As I searched through the pictures from that time period, I was hard-pressed to find one in which she was smiling.Sunday, September 4, 2011
What I've been up to lately, in pictures
I've been a bit busy lately, and instead of writing about it, I thought I'd share some fun pictures. Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes and to my husband for the sweet post. You guys sure know how to make a girl feel special! Here is how I've been spending my time:
Loving on these two adorable littles:
Finding ways to keep cool:
Loosing sleep, thanks to this little guy in my little guy's mouth:
Being amazed at how big this little guys is getting. He got his first tooth and took his first steps on the same day:
Laughing at the antics of my favourite girl:
Planning and pulling off (with the help of two amazing grandmas) a double birthday party. We rented a gym at our local rec centre and had 1 hour of play time, followed by food and, of course, CAKE!
I wish I could say this little creation was mine... I have some majorly talented friends. And she doesn't even do this as a living! Thanks Jyh Yi! Everyone LOVED the cakes.
Mattias's Very Hungry Caterpillar
SWAG at your own risk...
CAAAAAAKE!
Hmmmmm, what do I do with this?
If he could talk, he would have probably said, "THAT. WAS. AWESOME!!!!!"
Total cuties.
Sweet birthday girl...
... Hanging with her almost-birthday brother
BELLE!
And because I didn't have too much to do, plus I'm a little bit crazy, here are the signs I made up for the birthday grub.
It has been a great, albeit CRAZY couple of weeks! And it's only the beginning. Next week Elise starts school, we have an endo appointment, a gymnastics class, TWO well-child visits, and birthday cupcakes need to be made for her classroom birthday celebration.
I think I need another spa day!
Loving on these two adorable littles:
Finding ways to keep cool:
Loosing sleep, thanks to this little guy in my little guy's mouth:
Being amazed at how big this little guys is getting. He got his first tooth and took his first steps on the same day:
Laughing at the antics of my favourite girl:
Planning and pulling off (with the help of two amazing grandmas) a double birthday party. We rented a gym at our local rec centre and had 1 hour of play time, followed by food and, of course, CAKE!
I wish I could say this little creation was mine... I have some majorly talented friends. And she doesn't even do this as a living! Thanks Jyh Yi! Everyone LOVED the cakes.
Mattias's Very Hungry Caterpillar
SWAG at your own risk...
CAAAAAAKE!
Hmmmmm, what do I do with this?
If he could talk, he would have probably said, "THAT. WAS. AWESOME!!!!!"
Total cuties.
Sweet birthday girl...
... Hanging with her almost-birthday brother
BELLE!
And because I didn't have too much to do, plus I'm a little bit crazy, here are the signs I made up for the birthday grub.
It has been a great, albeit CRAZY couple of weeks! And it's only the beginning. Next week Elise starts school, we have an endo appointment, a gymnastics class, TWO well-child visits, and birthday cupcakes need to be made for her classroom birthday celebration.
I think I need another spa day!
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