Beating diabetes at its own game

Le sigh.


You know how everything old is new again? Well, we are back to almost having to use wrestling holds to give Elise her shots. That might fly with a 12 month old, but a freaked-out 4 year old is proving to be way, way stronger than me.

Crap-on-a-stick it's ba-a-a-a-ad. And if her BG is high? Freaking near IMPOSSIBLE.

I've tried all the old tricks, but it's almost impossible to reason with her. I even promised her that if she didn't resist her shots, she could give me a shot. In the bum.

Oh yes I did.

And yes she did. I let a 4 year old stick a needle in my arse (with Fred's supervision, of course). I'm a little taken aback at how gleeful she was about the whole thing.

And she did pretty well for awhile after that. Now she's back to her freaking out ways again. And there is no way I'm going to implement a shot-for-a-shot philosophy around here.

So yesterday morning over breakfast, I laid it all out for her. Maybe it was too harsh, I don't know. But diabetes is a harsh disease. And the sooner she gets that, the better. It went something like this:

(P.S. - please don't judge me for the way I choose to talk to my kid about diabetes. I am a realist... I don't believe in sugar-coating things or making things pretty when they're not. M'kay?)

I let her know that we love her very much. And we are so sorry that she has diabetes. In fact, I told her I would give her my pancreas in a heartbeat if I could. But it doesn't work that way. I told her that we don't like to give her shots, and we don't do it for chuckles, but the plain truth is; she will DIE if she doesn't have insulin.

I explained how heartbroken we would be if she wasn't with us anymore. How we would miss her. And that's why we have to take such good care of her. Then I went into the whole "everybody-has-something" bit. It's what you DO with your something that makes you who you are.

Then I appealed to her competitive side (and ohmygosh, don't ever try to beat her at anything). I told her that it's okay to be sad about diabetes sometimes, but when it makes us sad, mad or scared ALL the time, we're letting diabetes win.

When we show diabetes that we're not scared of it; the shots, the finger pokes, the dr. visits... then we are the ones who are winning (damn you Charlie Sheen for forever tainting that term).

Now, this girl LOVES to win. At everything. If you want to motivate her to do something, turn it into a race or a competition. Elise totally perked up when I started talking about beating diabetes.

"So if I don't cry at my shots, I'm beating diabetes? I win?" She asked.

I told her yes. That when diabetes isn't the boss of us, then we win. She liked that. In fact, she was ALL OVER that.

And you know what? It's working. With each shot, instead of crying, she now yells, "I WIN!"

So stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it, diabetes. You loose.

You're a loo-hoo-ser, diabetes!
(Elise at 15 months)