Ignorance & Cake

Ignorance

Insulin injections are fairly new to me and my (messed up) family but since my son requires insulin injections twice daily the dinner time one can be tricky.

If you don't know about insulin it helps our body store and use the sugar in foods that we eat and helps gives us energy. For someone who is insulin dependent your blood without insulin ends up being like sludge. It is hard to move and pump around to your body. Without insulin your heart and all of your organs have to work much harder. Eventually things shut down and a coma is induced by your body as a way to keep it from damaging you any further. Although I still picture it as my son doing the robot and just running out of steam and stopping mid move.

For people with Type 1 Diabetes their body no longer produces insulin and you need injections via needles or a pump. Lil Man is on the former. Twice daily injections. Mornings suck because on the weekends I have to wake him up to stay on schedule. Dinner is fine, when we are at home. This weekend I felt like a mother shooting her kid with heroine or some other injectable drug.

Since he was diagnosed we have only eaten lunch out because he does not require injections at lunch just a blood test. I have no qualms about doing that in public. However I was given the dirtiest looks and talked about as people peered into my car window while in the parking lot of our chosen restaurant. I could have done it inside but felt too odd about that. Plus, I don't trust any washroom that is not my own personal washroom so doing it in the restaurants washroom was also out of the question. How often do they really give a through clean?

So here I was sitting in my car mixing his insulin with Lil' Man next to me while he was priming his spot for the injection when I hear two mothers talking about how I shouldn't be giving needles to my kid. They were standing at the hood of my car with their judging eyes borrowing holes into me.  It took every ounce of me to not say anything to these women. Lil' Man said to me "Don't listen to them, they don't know what my situation is so they can't judge you for making me stay healthy". What a way to really make me thankful for my son and he is only five.

Cake 

Lil' Man attended his first ever birthday party since he was diagnosed.  I spoke to the parent and let them know what was up and that they don't need to worry because we sent him with an extra bit of sugar because we knew it would be worn off before lunch and if something were to happen he knew our number as well as it was sewn into his sweater. 

Everything went off without a hitch, that was until when I went to pick him up he didn't want to leave.  We eventually got him out of the door and into the car.  He told me they had hot dogs, brownies, cake, cookies, candy, chips and juice (he had three juice boxes).  I almost hit the roof of my car with everything he told me he ate.  He knows he can't have so much food for lunch but in the end when it came to dinner time his sugars were perfect so I wasn't too upset.  It is just scary to think that he might over eat/drink and send himself into a sugar induced coma because he doesn't know his body very well yet with all the new signs he has to pay attention too.