The Winding Down of Summer

Doesn't that sound ridiculous? It's July. Here in Arizona, the season known as summer will continue until at least mid-September. Then we may see the end of 100+ degree days, and by mid-October, it may be necessary to wear long sleeves in the morning on the way to work (but run the a/c in the car on the way home).

So why is summer winding down?











Because schools starts in TWO WEEKS. Yes, indeed, the kiddos of Arizona will be returning to pencils and books and homework in mere moments. We teachers will be back even sooner.....and there ARE districts where teachers have ALREADY returned to work!

But it's SUMMER, you say! How can you go back to school when it's not even close to Labor Day? How can you send kids to the playground when it's 110 outside in the shade? Well, let's put it this way. The folks who make the calendars aren't the ones who are on playground duty, you know what I mean? Although, to be fair, if we started in September, we'd go well into June. You know, June....when the average temperature in Phoenix is 105, and our high was once 122?

It's hard to have a "summer vacation" when summer last 6 months.

What's New?

I'm feeling the need to post something, even though there's nothing interesting to post...it's hot. Evil wicked nasty hot - but that's Arizona in July. Nothing new there.

We went to the water park last night, and Mr. Boy smacked his head in the wave pool. Nothing new there, either - if there is a way to injure himself, he will find it. (And he's fine - some ice on the head and a quiet evening fixed him up fine.)

Tomorrow is the 3-month endo appointment....time for another report card on "how good are you at being a pancreas?". Dr. D never says anything to that effect; she actually is very complimentary at how hard we work to take care of Miss M and the D Monster, but it always feels like a failure if her A1C goes up and a screaming success if it goes down. Feeling like a failure at managing a chronic illness in a hormonal pre-teen - nope, still nothing new. We do have good days, and we have bad ones, and the goal is for the good to outweigh the bad. Doesn't always turn out like that, though...

Replacement of the air conditioners at my school continues, so there is no WAY that I can go work in my classroom until it's finished...maybe next week? Summer is rapidly coming to a close for us, at least in terms of vacation....climate-wise, it will be summer for another 8 weeks at least. Not blast-furnace hot, but hot enough that going out to recess isn't a heck of a lot of fun for the kids (or the teachers). Putting off returning to my room? Nope, been doing that for more years than I can count.

Tonight is the midnight opening of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince. Why again did I agree to take three 12-year-old girls to this when we have to be at the clinic at 9 AM tomorrow? Oh, yeah, because I'm CRAZY. (that's definitely not anything new) Two weeks from now, when it comes out in IMAX 3D, we're going to have to go see it again, I'm afraid - but the idea of Quidditch on a 3-story tall screen really makes my stomach feel queasy. Mom = motion sick = old news.

So what's new with you? :)

Love/Hate relationship

Diabetes technology is a wonderful thing. Had my daughter been diagnosed 40 years ago instead of 4, we wouldn't have home blood glucometers that give a readout in 5 seconds using the tiniest drop of blood. We wouldn't have a blood ketone meter that tells in a half a minute whether or not she is in danger of developing diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), which can be fatal. We wouldn't have a pump, a CGM, rapid-acting insulin, carb counts on all the food she eats, or the wide variety of sugar-free products that are available to us today. Not sure, but we might not have even had disposable needles - the idea of sharpening a needle after boiling the syringes on the stove pretty much turns my stomach. (If she was born 40 years ago, she wouldn't be my daughter, either, but that's beside the point.)

The downside to all this is that all this technology takes time and effort and brainpower that I often don't have to spare in order to keep it working. I LOOOOOOVVVVEEEE having the continuous glucose monitor that reads her blood glucose levels every 5 minutes. OK, for the purists out there, it reads interstitial fluids rather than blood, but it still tells me where she is and if she's trending up, down, or relatively stable. FABULOUS information that is available with the push of a couple of buttons rather than a finger poke every 5 minutes.

Downside 1 - batteries. Tonight, I used up the last 3 button batteries I had trying to get a new CGM sensor and transmitter to talk to each other - a new battery comes in each box, but that doesn't mean that it's a new battery that is fully charged! After 30 minutes of sweating and swapping and praying that the last one would work, I heard the lovely little "BEEEEEEP" and saw the "New Sensor Detected" message I had been trying to find. Now, the 10 hour wait for calibration begins...which is a whole 'nother downside for a different day.

Downside 2 - carrying all this stuff around. The pump is tethered to her body by the tubing of the infusion set. This doesn't mean that it stays put, though - I just watched her stand up and screech because the pump fell towards the floor, yanking on said infusion set....OUCH. No pockets means nowhere to put the pump, the CGM receiver (which is not tiny, either), the lancing device and the test strips, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Downside 3 - she hates all this stuff. HATES it. She doesn't want to go back to shots, because I've given her the option, but having multiple pieces of equipment to carry around with her is terribly annoying. She LIKES not having to poke her finger 10 times a day or more, but the need to drag everything with her really ticks her off sometimes. Understandably, of course. Who wants to be tied to a couple of remote controls constantly?

Shortly after M was diagnosed, we went to a research presentation and heard a local doctor speak about putting kids on pumps. His idea was to incorporate the insulin pump into a cell phone/MP3 player. He said that would guarantee that EVERY teen would want one, and I think he is correct! If only there was an iPod/Phone/Pump combination.....it wouldn't take care of the battery issue, but integrating EVERYTHING into one easy to carry unit would sure be a step in the right direction!

The Numbers Game

Growing up, I was never one of those kids who was a math whiz. Sure, I got by in math class, but numbers were not my friends - I found my comfort in words, in books, in language. I could make sense of the most complex sentences, but throw the Pythagorean theorem at me, and I was lost.

High school algebra was the first time I ever got a failure notice in school...Pulled out a B, I think, but I choked my way through whatever math classes were required, and I certainly didn't sign up for any that were not necessary to get me through. When I went to college, I avoided certain career paths that were going to put me in multiple higher-level math classes, because math is NOT MY LANGUAGE. Maybe I'm just not an ordered, logical thinker (Me? Really?) but when it comes to numbers, they may as well be some exotic foreign language. Or, they might be English, but as spoken by the Swedish Chef.

So, isn't it ironic that my life nowadays REVOLVES around numbers?

Blood glucose readings


Continuous Glucose Monitoring


Insulin on board stats(IOB)

Carb Counts



Don't forget the quarterly Hemoglobin A1c tests, doctor's copays, serial numbers for the meters, the pump, the CGM transmitter, the CGM receiver, the phone numbers, insurance id numbers, the fees for doctors, specialists, prescriptions....the numbers never end.

Diabetes is an insidious, cruel, time-consuming and heart-wrenching disease....and it's ALL ABOUT THE NUMBERS.

Bork, bork, bork!!











PS...is it any wonder I find numbers confusing? This is what the temperature readout said in my car yesterday, less than 2 minutes apart...






By the way, the 100-degree reading was a LOT closer to reality
than the 80...sigh...

Two week post-tonsils

Happily, I survived the tonsillectomy! Truthfully, there were a few days that I wished I hadn't. I'm so happy for Vicodin (to kill the pain) and Phenergan (to kill the nausea caused by the Vicodin). I'm so happy that my husband took good care of me and even stayed home an extra day and a half because I felt so lousy. I'm so happy that we were able to schedule this "little procedure" at a time where both my kids could be gone away for a week, so I could rest easily without having to worry about what they were up to while I was unconscious. Which I was for the better part of seven days.

The night before the operation, the kids went to friends' houses to stay the night and part of Friday. The Dear Husband and I went out for dinner (my last solid food for a while!) and came home to watch a movie. Bright and early Friday, sans coffee - which may have been the hardest part - we set out for the surgicenter. A brief wait, an IV full of saline, a quick chat with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, and away I went.
I heard, "This may burn a little going in", and then "Good night". I don't think I was awake 30 seconds in the operating room.

90 minutes later, give or take, and I was awakened by a nurse asking if I was OK, if I could swallow a pill, and if I could get myself dressed while she went to get DH. Door to door, the entire thing took a little more than 3 hours, and that was with 20 minutes' drive each direction! Dr. S came out and told DH that my tonsils were "QUITE large and QUITE deep", and that I should expect a sore throat for a good 10 days or so. Boy, he wasn't kidding.

Kids came home in the afternoon, finished packing, and I was a happy girl with icepacks around my neck and Sonic Slush for inside. Swallowing wasn't pleasant, but I was still well-medicated. Saturday saw the kids leaving for their assorted destinations and the anesthesia wearing off. Suddenly I wasn't quite sure that I should have gone through with it after all.

The next few days pass in a bit of a blur of ice water, shaved ice, jello, pudding, and pills. Somewhere along the way, Tuesday perhaps?, I decided to cut back on the 2 AM pain pills and instead of taking 1.5, I took one half a pill. Not very smart....the next day I was right back to taking about as much as I could choke down.

Strangely enough, Friday - 7 days post-op - saw me awaken to a throat that was significantly improved. One side hurt very little, and the other was down from 9 on the pain scale to about a 6. Miss M came home from camp on Saturday, and we had a lovely but unusual weekend with only one child. (She would have liked to keep it that way, but that wasn't going to happen.) By this past Monday, when Mr. M was brought home by his grandpa, I was feeling MUCH improved. I promptly overdid it, and wiped myself out. Typical me.

Today, Miss M tested positive from strep throat, a lovely souvenir from diabetes camp last week. Apparently a few campers tested positive at the end of the week, and I hear that there are quite a few post-camp cases of it circulating. I also had my post-op check today, and Dr. S said that I needn't worry. Theoretically, I could still catch strep throat, but odds are that I won't. How would I know? I still have a sore throat.

Sooo, as it stands, one side of my throat hurts....it feels a lot like it would if I DID have strep. Or how it felt for a good deal of the past winter. More annoying is the lingering numbness in my tongue and the lack of sense of taste. Food doesn't have a lot of flavor for me at the moment, and sometimes i have trouble swallowing because 1/2 my tongue feels like I've been Novocained. Dr. S told me today that these may last a few weeks, even a few months.

Even if they do, I'll take that over being as sick as I was this year. Hopefully, the taste will come back and the numbness will dissipate....eventually.

Got Tonsils?

I do, for about another 12 hours - then it's ADIOS to the nasty little buggers.

So there may or may not be anything new coming your way for a few days, depending upon how much pain medication I actually consume. Shocking, I know - no new updates from the Rambling Mom! Oh, wait, you're already accustomed to that. :)

Bet I'll ramble even more when I'm on Percocet or Vicodin......

In the good old summertime....

the kids will gripe and whine.

Thus ends my attempt at modifying old song lyrics. ;)

We are now ending the first Monday of summer vacation, and my dear children are "so, so, so, so, so, so DESPERATELY bored"! Because, you know, they have nothing at all to occupy their time....unless you count the books, games, toys, electronic gadgets, 250+ channels of television and music, the swimming pool, the bikes and skateboards and scooters. Nope, those don't count.

Thankfully, next week they will both be off to their special trips.
Miss M is off to Camp AZDA, the ADA's camp for kids with diabetes. This is her fourth summer going to camp, and it is the ABSOLUTE HIGHLIGHT of her entire year. Last year, she announced that she wanted to live there all year, even though it's not actually D camp year-round....didn't matter. She is also VERY excited to have our good friend, known at camp as "Knockout", as her DC (diabetic counselor) this year. Each cabin has a young adult with Type 1 assigned to that group; generally each cabin has 6 or 8 girls, I believe. They also have Med Staff, which can be a nurse, doctor, CDE or other medical professional that is experienced in dealing with the D Monster. These wonderful DCs and Staffers, all of whom have "camp names", work very hard to keep all the kids as safe as it is humanly possible to be. During the 7 days she is at D Camp, she is more closely monitored and supervised than any other place she goes - probably even more so than she is at home. There is ALWAYS someone with her that knows what to do. We check in with med staff at camp drop-off, and get a report from the same staff at camp pick-up, including a log with everything that happened d-wise during the week.

The Boy will be off to grandma and grandpa's house for his special time with them. Two years ago, he started going there to do Vacation Bible School in the morning at their church, and then spending the rest of the day exploring the Sonoran Desert that surrounds their home. Grandpa always enlists him to help with projects and puts him to work in one way or another, and he has a grand and glorious time being the center of attention.

And what fabulousness will I be experiencing sans children, you might ask?
Hold onto your hats - *I* will be recuperating from a tonsillectomy. Yes, that's right, at the tender age of I will be saying goodbye to my germ-laden, oversized, nasty sickness-bearing tonsils. Doesn't THAT just sound like fun?

May I just say that one of the worst things I've chosen to do in the last week or so was to google "adult tonsillectomy" and spend 2 hours reading assorted postings from previous patients. DUH!!! I had already heard plenty of stories from people, but I just felt some insane need to try to negate those stories with internet info. DOUBLE DUH!!!! While I knew it wasn't going to be the most pleasant thing I've experienced, I was hoping it wasn't going to be that bad. One of my brothers had to have his palate and uvula reshaped due to sleep apnea, and had a really, really unpleasant couple of weeks. My hope is that it won't be quite as bad as his recovery turned out to be. Did I mention that I have the pain tolerance of...something with absolutely no pain tolerance? I'm the mom who asked for the epidural at 7 months....I'm hoping for a swift recovery, or at least for good pain meds.

Otherwise, it won't be the kids doing the griping and whining.