A Month To Remember....

So, October hasn't been exactly a banner month for the Schroeder clan.  It began on October 1st with Sarah being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and will end on October 31st with Dawn having her gallbladder removed.  Grab a latte', curl up in your most comfortable seat, and come along as I look back at the journey that was October 2016....

Sarah is still grappling with her diabetes.  She is compliant in action but defiant in spirit when it comes to her T1D.  I can't blame her.  I'd want to ignore it or run away from it myself.  It's life altering, especially at 16 years old, right when you're spreading your wings and beginning to fly.  Planning for college, working almost full time, school work, dance company, church youth group, leading the middle school girls at church as well.... there wasn't any room for something as HUGE as T1D; yet here it is, the biggest party crasher of them all.  She does her finger pokes, texts me her numbers, tells me what she's eating.  I figure out her insulin doses and give her the shots, I pour over her log to make adjustments where needed, adding in additional shots as we go along.  Within the past month she's gone from only needing an insulin shot at lunch, to now needing her long acting insulin shot each night (provides her a basal rate of insulin for 24 hours) and 2 soon to be 3 shots of fast acting insulin when she eats.  Yes, over the past month, since her diagnosis, things have progressed rapidly.  Rapidly enough for her endocrinologist to approve an Omnipod pump system for her to start on whenever she feels ready to do so.  She is keeping her focus on God's will for her in all this; knowing that He has a purpose for her to reach people through her T1D...but at 16, it's still hard to accept, and there are those days that you just want to chuck it all and run away from it.  She is awesome though, and doing well.  She will continue to grow stronger as she fully accepts all that this new normal entails for her.

As her mom, I struggle.  Our family and daily dynamics have changed.  I've lost my groove.  Our life is crazy and a bit chaotic to begin with, over the past 11 years we've managed Gracie's T1D naturally, without giving it much thought once we got about 6 months past her diagnosis so many years ago.  But now....now, I have two with T1D and it requires A LOT of attention.  Things are falling through the cracks and at times I feel like a duck, paddling like mad just to stay afloat, and barely treading water.  I find that as my focus is on Sarah at the moment, I forget to check Gracie's numbers and tell her to bolus for her meals (unless we are all together, of course) and end up bolusing a correction dose of insulin instead.  Gracie SHOULD know to do this, but she is a kid and frankly chooses to ignore it.  She doesn't realize the long term danger she places herself in by ignoring her T1D right now.  As their mom, it's my job to manage their T1D, help them to take ownership of it themselves so they can manage it themselves, and eventually pass the torch, so to speak, to each of them as they are ready to live independently, caring for themselves and their T1D.  I'm not going to lie, I feel like I'm failing at this right at the moment.... I know it will get better, but right now, I'm running in circles trying to stay on top of everything their T1D entails.  Simple things such as night time checks are complicated by the fact that Sarah sleeps downstairs and we sleep upstairs... that means that Craig and I need to go down two flights of steps and to the opposite corner of the house in the dead of night to do finger pokes on her (Gracie is just across the hall from our room).  Sarah isn't home much, so most of her T1D management is via text and she and I meeting up for her shots when she's at work, dance, church, or out with her friends.  She drives.... yeah, that's terrifying for a parent when the teen driver is a newly diagnosed T1D.  She doesn't appreciate the rule of testing before starting the truck, but to her credit she does it :)  We are working towards getting Sarah a Dexcom (continuous glucose monitor) so we can see her blood sugars, real time, on our phones.  This is vital since she doesn't know what it feels like to have a low blood sugar yet, since being newly diagnosed she's only used to higher BGs.  Of course insurance has already denied it because she hasn't had any lows to show, but I'll be filing an appeal based on medical necessity based on other criteria besides just low BGs.  Yes, all the cutting edge technology in the world of diabetes helps immensely, but it also complicates things too.  Mixed blessings.

Craig has been in Colorado pretty much this entire month, coming home on the weekends.  God has blessed him with an incredible amount of work, new clients, and new contracts, but the sacrifice is that he is away from home quite a bit.  When he's home though, we enjoy time spent together as a family, and I enjoy not doing the nighttime BG checks :)  Last weekend, for example, we loaded up and went to Topeka for the Mother Earth News Fair, something we've enjoyed doing the last couple of years.  It's an awesome experience for the girls to learn new things that you'd never find covered in text books.  We've been planning and trying for nearly 4 years now to move back to the farm.  We want to build a home that can function off grid, where we can live comfortably and self-reliantly with our girls and enjoy our animals.  The Mother Earth News Fair is great for learning about alternative building techniques, better gardening and food production, animal care, etc.  The girls learn more in a day spent there, than a week at their desks :)  This year however, I wasn't feeling that great, and on the way home was throwing up every few miles in the road ditch.  UGH!  That was a first for me.  It didn't take long for me to finally realize what was going on..... my gallbladder was acting up.

Monday I got into my doctor.  She ran a slew of lab work and sent me for an ultrasound.  By Tuesday, her nurse called with the ultrasound report and the news that I was being referred to the surgeon.  I met with the surgeon's nurse on Thursday who explained everything to me.  Basically, it's time for my gallbladder to go, there's just no getting around it.  And, it's better to do it now while I have the "choice" than to wait for it to potentially rupture and be in an emergency situation.  So......that leads me to this coming Monday..... I'll be in surgery getting my gallbladder removed.  Thankfully, Craig is home until Wednesday this coming week, and Tess and Sarah took off work to watch Gracie and Hannah while I'm in the hospital. It's yet another time I'm ever so thankful for our homeschooling lifestyle!  Sarah can do her schoolwork while she and Tess help Gracie and Hannah with their lessons.  They can take care of the animals and things around our home as well.  I can go to the hospital knowing they are all just fine, and for that I'm beyond thankful.  Of course, my mom and Anne (the girls surrogate mom and riding instructor) are on notice in case they need anything, which again I'm so thankful for.  With a family like ours, that has the special needs we do, we have never really had backup in emergencies; now that Tess and Sarah are grown and can take care of their little sisters at times like this, it's a huge relief.  Again, a benefit of the homeschooling life.... a close knit family that pulls together in times of need :)  Yes, I love my little tribe :)

So, here it is, Saturday afternoon.  Craig is listening to the pre-game on the radio, researching ways to keep insulin cool should anything happen to the power grid (like it or not, we've all been told that it isn't an "if" but rather a "when" it will go down at some point) and pricing out one of the building techniques he recently learned about for the house he's designed at my work table.  The girls are upstairs enjoying themselves on this beautiful last Saturday in October with their best friend Rhi.  Sarah is in her happy place....working at Runza until 9 tonight.  The dogs are basking in the late autumn sunshine.  And me.... well, I'm going to go curl up in the corner of the sofa and do some stitching while I watch my hubby from the corner of my eye as he concentrates on his research, sharing my happy place with him, so thankful that he takes providing for all of us as seriously as he does.  Yes, October 2016 will go down as a month to remember in our family history, but we are all together, snug in our home, and that alone still makes it all good :)