Difficulties...

Savanna’s back at school this week – the virus has left the building and is not invited back!  I was hoping we would get back to some sort of “normal” here…and we have, for the most part.  Unfortunately – and I don’t know if it’s from being sick, or what – but, blood sugar checks and insulin injections have been difficult over the last few days.  For the most part, she’s usually so great about it.  But, this week (more specifically, this weekend) was a whole other story…

She woke up Saturday morning and we were snuggling on the couch watching TV.  I asked her what she wanted for breakfast and she said “I’m not hungry”…I let it go, because I figured she was still waking up and would let me know if/when she wanted something.  About 45 minutes later, I asked again…she said “I’m not hungry”.  I asked her to at least check her blood sugar because I didn’t want her to drop too low if she wasn’t eating – she refused. We argued about it for another 30 minutes and she finally agreed to check.  She was 130 – exactly where she needed to be…not too high, not too low.  I wasn’t concerned about her being too low, so I sent her upstairs to see if Daddy wanted to go out and get something to eat – in hopes that she would want to eat if we were at a restaurant.  We all got ready, got in the car and off we went.  We got there and immediately Savanna started saying “I’m not hungry”.  Now, I know my daughter well enough to know that, at this point in the day, she WAS hungry – and, more importantly, she HAD to eat.  So, we told her she had to eat…and she didn’t want to.  Long story short – we ended up leaving the restaurant without food, in tears and went home.

When we got home, I sat down to talk to Savanna about why she wasn’t hungry and her response broke my heart: “I don’t want to eat because I don’t want to get insulin and then make my blood sugars drop low”.  6-years old and THAT is what she is worried about…it just makes me so sad for her.  Now, we’ve had difficulties before, but she usually just doesn’t want to do what she needs to because she doesn’t want to take the time – this was a whole different issue.  And made me think…why would she be so worried about this NOW, all of a sudden…and, then I remembered:

We were at WalMart the night before, after she had insulin for some ice cream she didn’t finish, and she started to feel “low”.  For Savanna, this means her legs feel shaky, her stomach doesn’t feel well – she’s pretty good at knowing the symptoms and letting us know.  We immediately went to the checkout line and got a bottle of soda – as we were waiting in line, I opened it up so she could take a sip.  And, she was fine – a couple of sips of soda and she was smiling again.  We started to talk about how she had insulin for ice cream about an hour earlier and how she had to finish it all – and, then, we got unwelcome,  unsolicited advice from a nurse in front of us in line.  She turned about, looked at Savanna, and said “You need to be careful because if you drop too low you’ll get really sick.”  Now, I realize that maybe she was just trying to *help*, but after our day on Saturday, I realize that all she did was frighten Savanna – and now we were sitting on the family room floor on a Saturday afternoon, both crying because she was afraid to get insulin. 

We got through it – we had our discussion about how insulin was good for her and helps her, not hurts her.  We found a food (the go-to toast with Nutella) that she wanted to eat…and she ate 4 slices!  Shortly after she was smiling and playing outside…she was happy, which relieved me. 

It’s almost been a full year that we’ve been living with Diabetes, but every now and then we’re hit with something we haven’t experienced before…and we’ll get through it – sometimes there are speed bumps in our day that prevent our ride from being as smooth as we’d like.  This weekend, that speed bump was the nurse at WalMart…next week, I’m sure it will be the tons of Halloween candy floating around!