A Day in the Life

Today is my first post for Diabetes Blog Week, the brain child of Karen at Bitter Sweet.

I am grateful for the focus as hubby goes away on Wednesday for a week hiking in Scotland. Normally he goes for two and a half weeks but with the new regime and Frank's young age it felt better this year to make it a shorter trip.

So, a typical day for us:

Somewhere between midnight and 6am I rise to go to the bathroom. This visit is guaranteed by my drinking a whole pot of green tea every evening because a) it's probably good for me and b) I want to check my baby is breathing.

I change his nappy, stroke his hair, allow myself to breathe and go back to bed.

6am-6:30am Frank calls "Mummy!" at the top of his voice as he wakes and I bury my head under the duvet for a few more seconds. He pads in ,bringing toys that we have to include in our game of his devising.

We all cuddle and tell each other we love each other.

Sounds schmaltzy but we do.

Life is precious and our link to it seems tenuous with the Type 1 fairy loitering around.

7:30am We all get showered, dressed and make our way downstairs. A BG test and then breakfast which is followed by CBeebies (children's BBC) as we inject the Novarapid and the Lantus. We find that having the TV on for a few minutes helps keep him still as we inject. If we are both at home we have developed a kind of pincer movement where we inject a buttock each! Synchronised insulin injections! Otherwise I just talk loudly about what's going on on Bob the Builder or whatever and he is young enough to be distracted.

The rest of our days vary according to who is home or at least with Frank. I gave up teaching at Christmas and Andrew works part time so we are able to share to diabetic load, so to speak, equally. Some days Frank is at pre-school and so I go and test his glucose and give him his injection there.

In between meals there are snacks of around 15g carbs.

At dinner time we eat early, between 5 and 5:30pm. Frank is tested and injected after he has eaten as he is so young we never know how much he might eat at any given meal. To give an idea of how much this varies, for breakfast he eats like the proverbial king with cereal, milk, toast, fruit and sometimes yoghurt too and needs what feels like an HUGE bolus. Also, his growth hormones mean that his ratio for morning insulin is higher than later in the day.

In the evening he might need a third of the insulin of his breakfast bolus.

He has a snack at bedtime and I check his glucose at around ten most evenings. Some evenings I am so convinced I got it right that I let his fingers rest. Most evenings I need the proof and reassurance and so I test.

My gut tells me what to do.

Our fab diabetes specialist nurse and I disagree on the nature of this condition.

I feel it is an art getting it right and she feels it is a science.

It would be a science if at any given point we were in the presence of all the relevant facts.

That seems impossible as the body is such a delicate and finely-tuned entity.