All Work and No Play

How is life going? Have you found yourself recently trying to do all diabetes all day and night? Has your child been ill, leaving no room for anything (even a shower)? Or are you just trying to be the best parent/caregiver you know how and that means an A1c less than 7! images

This can mean living with too much stress and creating a more clinical environment for your type 1 child. What has your family done recently that has been fun and not structured around diabetes (at least to the best of your parental abilities)? Or structured around diabetes as a learning experience or game?

Here are some Ideas to try for a week

Diabetes is never fun, but sometimes it’s good to change things up a bit. For example, only do the basic things for meals like carbohydrate counting and giving insulin.

The whole family checks their blood sugar – new lancets!

Everyone does a site or CGM insertion

Different treatment, see post on treatments

Low-key approach to lows and highs, be calm

The other parent takes charge: spa day!

All Work and No Play Can Make Diabetes Unbearable

Aside Leave a comment August 14, 2015 Stacey

The Weekend

Here it is our first real out-of-state vacation without the kids. My mother-in-law took them for us while we scooted off to Seattle, WA for five days. This would mark our first “BIG” trip without the kids. We have had others: to the mountains for a night or they have scooted over to friends’ houses overnight. But to go out-of-state without me being in complete control of Quincy’s diabetes for five days (and he was not at camp)? My feelings: excited, scared, curious to see if I could do it and not go psycho crazy and need to control everything! So I plotted my obsessive need to control all the details. spaceneddle

The details

Five days at grandma’s house. She had a mini-trips planned with the kids. This meant I needed to plan and discuss what is expected for Quincy when you are more than 30 minutes from home, staying in a hotel, and then going on a fabulous train ride (which was way more exciting for my kids than going to some silly city!). I, of course, have the “travel overnight” and not being at a hotel down to a “T” with skiing. But I actually had to think my steps through and decided what a non-routine caregiver would need to do for a fun-filled grandparent weekend.

The steps

We do use our book for our son. Now that he is a young teenager he does quite a bit on his own with lots of supervision. He needs his travel bag and then several smaller bags for the train ride. The travel bag consists of several pump site changes, insertion device (it is never fun to leave this at home), insulin, Lantus (just in case the pump fails all together), syringes, test strips, glucagon (in every pocket imaginable), alcohol wipes, sugar, and an extra glucometer. That is the big bag. Now experience has taught my family that taking one to two extra glucometers is a must, and keeping things in several places is a must. So my mother-in-law had a baggie with a glucometer and sugar for her purse, and my son took the site change (only one) in his diabetic bag on the train. Then came special training about keeping all diabetic supplies from being too hot or too cold in the event they may not function right.

The result

We had an exceptional time in Seattle. The kids had fun with my mother-in-law. Mobile phone communication was mostly about our trips and very little about blood sugars until the last day and that will be the next post. My mother-in-law utilized the book when she needed to and it kept everything running smoothly. It’s amazing how a full scope of knowledge helps care for your child! Everything she needed to take care of Quincy was right in the our book, “Type 1 Diabetes and Babysitting: A Parent’s Toolkit”.