You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

You take the good.
You take the bad.
You take them both and there you have life with D!
(You're singing that aren't you?)

That was our evening.
A little good.  A little bad.

I'll start with the good.

Tonight was gymnastics.

Gymnastics has been kicking our rear ends the past few... weeks?  Months?

Sweets runs on the low side at school - especially in the afternoons.  Activity has really been a challenge for us this year.  As soon as she gets home, she wants a snack because her lunch is so early in the day.  That's fine.  Except on gymnastics day when snack insulin peaks during class and sends her crashing.

We have tried an unbolused snack.  We have tried a minus basal.  We have tried turning the pump off.  We have tried combinations of the three.

Nothing works.

She either is sky high or she goes low anyway.

SO.  FRUSTRATING.

One good thing about this is Sweetpea's incredible, awesome, amazing gymnastics coach.  Sweets has been with Miss B for a couple of years.  She is so sweet!  When Sweets broke her arm last year, Miss B sent her a get well card!  But her awesomeness is proven in how she handles diabetes.

Miss B can tell when Sweets is low.  She gives us a sign if she thinks something is off.  And 99% of the time, she is right.  That's amazing.  NO ONE else can tell.  She just KNOWS her.  She knows her balance and strength and personality and can tell right away if something is off.  We LOVE her!

Today's good news is that we FINALLY got it right!

I don't know how.  It was most likely a combination of things, including the retrograde of Mars in relation to the third moon of Venus or something.  I don't care.  I'll take it.

She went into class with this number...

And returned at this number...

We turned the pump off and boosted her covered snack a little with a few carbs.

And, of course, Miss B said she was ON today and did great!

Now for the not so good...

While I'm sitting there watching Sweets do cartwheels on the balance beam I can't help but overhear the people next to me talking.

SHE works in a vet office.  HE is intrigued and asking her lots of questions.

SHE is telling him about the surgery they do there and HE is asking questions about the facility.  (I'm eavesdropping because it's our vet and I'm curious as to what she has to say since I really like it!)  SHE tells him they do all different kinds of procedures and have lots of different medicines on hand to treat any kind of illness.  Medicines including insulin.

HE says, "Insulin?  You mean dogs can get treated for diabetes too?  Do people really do that"
SHE answers that yes, they can.  And that it often requires TWO shots a day.

I'm sitting there thinking... "TWO?!?  Try SIX.  PLUS finger sticks."

And then HE says... "That has to be really expensive."
SHE replies that yes, it is.

HE says, "Pretty soon we're gonna need Obama Care for dogs.  People are going to expect us to pay to  keep their dogs alive, too.  I grew up on a farm.  When a dog was sick or had diabetes you didn't treat it.  They just went under the stairs and died."

Wow.

That's all I've got.  Wow.

This comment bothered me.  It isn't about Obama Care or health care.  It's the ignorance behind that comment.  It's the complete lack of concern for life.

I really try to have a sense of humor about diabetes.  I think it's important to laugh at ourselves and this life.  I try not to take everything so seriously.  And maybe HE was just trying to be funny.

But I didn't laugh.

I wanted to say...

See that little girl out there?  The one in the white t-shirt that says "Walk to Cure" on it.  The one flipping over the bars and doing roundoffs across the floor.  The one with the kinda curly brown hair and sparkling blue eyes.  The one with the big smile and contagious laugh.

She has that disease you're talking about.

She's lived with it longer than she's lived without it.  She didn't ask for it.  She did nothing to make it happen.  She couldn't have stopped it if she had tried.

It IS expensive.

You see that bag in my purse?  Those are the supplies we carry with us at all times.  The needles we use to prick her fingers 8-10 times a day.  The special medicine we are to give her if she has a seizure or passes out.  And yes, it's a needle too.

You see that cell phone thing I keep looking at?  That's keeping track of her blood glucose.  Because we have to watch it all the time.  And yes, it's another needle.  In her arm.  A sensor she wears all the time and is changed once a week.

And then there's her insulin pump.  No, it doesn't mean we don't have do anything.  It's inserted every three days.  Yup, another needle.  I can't even begin to tell you how complicated THAT is.

She's having a good day today.  Today you see her at her best.  But some weeks she can't stay on the beam.  Some weeks she falls off because she is low and too dizzy to stay on.  Some weeks she doesn't have the strength to lift herself up and over the bars because she is too high and feeling sluggish.

That little girl that looks as healthy as everyone else.

Is she too much of an imposition to keep alive?  Is it too much to ask that she have access to health care?  Would you just put her under the stairs, too?  Would you just let her die so you didn't have to deal with it?

What do you even say in a situation like that?

I said nothing.  It wasn't my conversation.

I just kept my eyes on my girl.  And played a little "Candy Crush" when I couldn't take it any longer!

All I can do is shake my head...

And know how true this is.