We brought my son into the hospital, only to come home with a new way of life. In some ways it is hard to believe that it has been one month. In other ways it feels like years!
People keep encouraging us that it will get easier and in some ways it has. Things are becoming more routine and we pretty much have just figured out that you can never really figure out Diabetes. One day his body will react this way, the next day it will react another way. All we can do is go with the flow and deal with the moment. Isn't that how we're supposed to live anyhow? In the moment?
In the day to day managing of his diabetes, I don't get very emotional. We just go through the calculations and the processes just like we're supposed to. Every once in awhile, however, it hits me. Like the other day when I was at the pharmacy with all of the other chronic prescription picker-uppers. The lady in front of me was chatting away about her medications with the pharmacist and they were on a first name basis. I figure that will be me someday very soon.
And when they ask you, as you are about to pay for the prescription, "Did they tell you how much this is going to cost?" I don't know why, but it gets me every time.
Or last night, at 12:30 when we were sitting in my bed waiting for our 15 minutes to pass after drinking his juice so that I could see if his blood glucose levels came up sufficiently, and he nodded off to sleep next to me. That's when it hits me what he's going through and what he has to look forward to for the rest of his life.
But then we both get up the next morning and face the day with a good attitude, and for that I'm grateful.
Another thing that I'm very grateful for is that I have, in a way, been prepared for this over the past 10 years. When we were in the hospital and the nurses told us about how he would have to eat on a regular schedule, how we would have to count carbs and eat healthy I was so grateful that we had already been doing those things.
We've eaten on a schedule ever since I can remember. Breakfast around 7:00, snack at 10, lunch at Noon, snack at 3 and dinner between 5 and 6. Perfect. We've cleaned up our eating considerably during those years and all of our kids know what carbs, fats (healthy vs unhealthy) and proteins are. If I had had to tackle all of that on top of everything else (like injections and monitoring and worrying about those lows) my brain would have exploded. I can see the beauty of being organized even more clearly now because it has made this chaos much more manageable. God is Good! All the time!
So we move forward into our second month of a lifetime. One step at a time as we cling tightly to Jesus' hand and walk this walk with Our Lady of Sorrows who knows exactly how we all feel and is with us every step of the way.
God Bless!
