Is it Spring already?

We've gone from winter to spring in less than 1 week in our corner of Canada. No complaints. As much as I enjoyed skiing and the other winter activities, it feels so good to be able to bike outside again. Even Adele has been asking to go biking which is usually the other way around. I know that winter isn't over yet and that we'll likely get a few snowstorms before the end of it all but I'll still take the nice weather while it lasts.

We've received the dates for this summer's Diabetes camp. I was really hoping that this would be the first year that Adele would go, but it's not looking so good. Actually, the idea is pretty much dead. I asked if a parent would be able to stay for the first night or if we could go pick Adele up so that she would sleep with us but the camp director said that wasn't possible. The only option is to drop her off and tell her "See you in a week". She really, really doesn't want to go since she rarely (ie NEVER) goes to sleepovers and she doesn't have any current friends at camp. I know that she would love it and make friends once there, but I can't go through the crying and screaming of forcing her to go and just leaving her there against her will. She goes through enough already because of the Type 1 game. Our only chance is one of her babysitters (who is also a Type 1 gamer) who is a camp counselor (or something like that?). If she would be there at the same time as Adele, then maybe (a big MAYBE) she'd be willing to give it a try. If not, we'll try again in 2011. Maybe the whole camp thing is us just being selfish wanting a week off from Type 1 gaming? Who knows?

I have an obsessive personality. My wife reminds me every once in a while and I really have no problem admitting it. I'm not compulsive, just obsessive. It's sometimes about biking, training or whatever else I have going on. Since our last Diabetes clinic apointment, I've become a victim of obsessing about Adele's A1C. For non gamers, the A1C blood test mesures the average blood glucose level for the last 3 months. What I hate about this test is that it's pretty much a setup for failure. It'll never be as good as a non-gamer. The pancreas simply does a way better job at keeping blood sugar in check compared to the human brain. It always seems to be "not good enough" or that it "could be better" or even "let's see if we can lower it even just a tad more?". Lower is supposedly better, but this has to be achieved without too many dangerously low blood sugars. I hate the test, but can't help but get caught up in the whole competition of getting a "good mark". No matter what Adele's A1C is, there is absolutely nothing more I can humanly do to help bring it down... Or maybe I should rephrase that and say that there is nothing more that I can do and still maintain sanity. See, that's where the guilt comes into play, because you can always ask yourself if you could do more. I really don't want Adele to get caught up in that guilt game... It sucks and absolutely nothing good comes out of it. The psychological aspect of the Type 1 game is often overlooked, but is still a very, very big part of it... and sadly most often this suffering is not apparent from the outside.

So, back to my A1C obsession, Adele's result had gone down a bit since the last one, but still not enough to meet the goal in my obsessive mind. Our doc suggested that she's now old enough to aim for a lower blood glucose at night. Lower numbers throughout the night should be the single change that will have the biggest bang for our buck in regards to lowering her A1C. Food intake and insulin boluses to cover them during the day make it much more difficult to maintain a flat blood glucose variation line compared to basal insulin only during the night. We already wake up every night to check, so we should be able to catch lows. Nights when we're using the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) gives us an extra layer of security given the alarm that goes off when her blood sugar drops too low. We're now aiming for the 6 to 7 (108 to 126) range instead of 8 to 9 (144 to 162). The funny thing about this is that we aim for 6 or 7, but most often we're not there when she (or I) go to bed.

One of the things that I hate about tightly controlled blood sugars is the extra snacks that need to be given more often to avoid lows. I hate "force feeding" like that. We try to teach Adele to not overeat and listen to her body, but then other times, like tonight when we decided to go for an unplanned bike ride, she NEEDS to eat something before heading out to avoid going low. Sometimes I just wish we could... just go for a bike ride without obsessing about the numbers !