Hollywood Says it so it Must Be True

I love a good fairy tale revamp, so I was super pumped about the new movie "Hansel and Grettle." But now there is one thing about the movie that is bothering me. It is Hansel. He has diabetes. And, since he is insulin dependent, it seems to be type 1 diabetes. And the reason Hansel has this horrible disease? Sugar ... lots and lots of sugar from the witch's house.

Sigh.

Hollywood, type 1 diabetes is not caused by too much sugar. It is an autoimmune disease. And, while we're here, type 2 isn't caused by a poor diet alone - genetics play a very large factor. But you throw around these misconceptions like they are nothing, and it really gets my panties in a bunch. Don't you have fact checkers on staff? Don't you have medical consultants who can call you on your ridiculous ideas of how the world really works outside your bubble?

I am waiting, Hollywood, for the day my daughter and her peers are old enough to pick up on crazy ideas like that. I am waiting for them to tease and taunt her about her diabetes being caused by sugar ..  for them to accuse me, or even her, of causing this disease. I am waiting on that day because the misconceptions are already out there.

In a waiting room the other day, a mother told her son that he better not eat his sucker or he'd get diabetes. As a mom, I understand a good scare tactic, but this one was so damaging. What if one of his classmates is diagnosed with diabetes, and he becomes that kid that I fear for my own daughter? What has she taught her son except that people cause their own diabetes? How can he be sensitive to diabetics when she is painting such a negative picture of them? Or, and the biggest of them all, how will she reverse the damage if he himself is diagnosed with diabetes?

Maybe, Hollywood, you should stick to things you know, like reinventing comic book heroes and picking up Spielberg movies, and keep your misconceptions to yourself. Because I did not give my one-year-old diabetes by force-feeding her sugar like some evil witch. Because there are people out there who are already ignorant about the disease. Because society does not need your veiled commentary on the obesity epidemic in the U.S.

Because you don't know, and if you don't know, then you should let someone who does know do the talking.

Pod Change Night: Part 2

Every third day we change C's insulin pump, and every third night I am up every two hours trying to get her blood sugar back down. Pod change nights always result in her blood sugar struggling to get out of the 300s. My goodness, it is exhausting ... and frustrating.

I just want to slap her pump and tell it to pull itself together while violently shaking it. We pay good money for you so work, darn it!

We will conquer this. We've already started trying some new tricks that the pump allows me to try, but we need to keep tweaking and adjusting those little tricks until we find something which works for her. Until then, though, I will continue to buy black tea in bulk (you know, some days I wish I was a coffee drinker) and set my alarm for every 120 minutes.

And if any of you are worried about how these frequent checks affect C, no worries. She told me the other day she doesn't mind when I check her in the middle of the night because even if she does wake up, she never remembers. Thanks, girly. Your support and understanding is greatly appreciated.

Holiday Carb Overload

Until C got diabetes, I didn't really think about what was in the food we ate as part of our traditional holiday meals. What I have become aware of is that we are heavy on the carbs around the holidays. Some people might cringe or be ashamed of this, but not me. This is what we eat, have always eaten, and will continue to eat.

To top it off, C was born on December 23, so we always take her out to eat since there is no way that her party will EVER be on her actual birthday. So far, for the past four years, she has chosen Red Robin as her birthday eatery. Is it for their creamy mac and cheese? Or maybe their tasty fries? No, although she does have huge portions of both of those. It is for the fact that on your birthday you get a ginormous sundae - chocolate sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles, and all. It's a carb-tastic meal. This year we figured she had eaten just over 100 carbs (she usually eats around 40 per meal). Sadly, we had underestimated the number of carbs, so it was more than that even. Diabetic caretakers of the year, right here.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, like I mentioned, do not give us a reprieve from the carbs. If we remove the turkey and the green beans, everything else has a bamillion carbs in it. It's pretty incredible the amount of carbs my ancestors managed to pack into one dish. I honestly am not sure how they did it, but they did. Luckily C doesn't eat a lot of this stuff as she's a pretty picky eater, but the stuff she does eat is loaded. We often have to call her plates her plates, and we don't always get them right.It's a fun game, really, if "fun" means totally stressful and not fun at all.

For 72 hours, C spends most of her time on a roller coaster of blood sugar numbers. She is usually too high or too low. Normally it would throw her for a loop, but her birthday and Christmas seem to take away the sting of being unstable. Any other day she would be an emotional mess, but these three days it's not a big deal ... she just keeps on going. And after those 72 hours, we start to see her numbers return to normal. Until New Year's Eve. But that's a tale for another day.