A not-so-gentle reminder |
| Articles - Diabetes Articles | |||
| Friday, 10 December 2010 07:59 | |||
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Tonight, while driving home from dinner and cupcakes, Liam called from the backseat to tell me he was low. Though I found that HIGHLY unlikely since he was barely bolused for dinner- let alone the cupcake- I decided to pull over and check him. He's spent much of the last two days with his pump turned off, guzzling juice box after juice box while barely cruising along at 100- so I wasn't going to chance it. Dexcom said 297 and dropping, but I pulled over and parked the car so I could crawl into the back and negotiate the strips
and meter since it was already dark.
I wiped his (cupcake-y) finger clean with the alcohol swab, let it dry, and poked his finger in what is probably best described as some sort of daze. Not to say I wasn't paying attention, just that I was approaching the task from a place of routine that is so repetitive that I didn't flinch when I saw the blood. We can't, right? I can't allow puncturing my son's flesh multiple times a day to paralyze me with grief. If I did that, I would miss all the good moments in between: the look on his face as he gets to dive into the cupcake, as he runs back out to play even harder. So it wasn't the blood that made me flinch. It was the tiny, but resolute voice of my 17 month old daughter sitting in the car seat next to him that perked up at the sound of the lancet and said "ouch!" I looked to her, and again, she pointed at the lancet hovering over Liam's finger and said "oh, ouch!"
In her short little life she has had her blood sugar tested maybe 5 times or so, and only a couple she might remember, but in that tiny little chunk of experience, she has already registered that the lancet that I figured she could barely feel set at "1" is equal to "ouch." Wow.
The look of concern and compassion on her face stunned me. While finger-poking may have been a battle in the beginning, now over a year later, Liam doesn't usually even react. That isn't to say it doesn't hurt. If you ask him, he will tell you in his way too wise 4 1/2 year old voice that it does. In all the repetitive tasks we do as parents managing diabetes, it is easy to lose sight of what we are actually doing. Things that once seemed barbaric and unnatural become part of a routine, and before we know it "pick a finger" becomes just as common as "put on your shoes" or "wash your hands." I don't resent that it has become routine to us. That is a necessity. It is what allows us to move through it quickly and get on with the good stuff. But the reminder Peyton gave me tonight broke the haze just long enough for me to remember: it still hurts.
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