Set up to fail

Sometimes I am convinced the cosmos have put me in a lose-lose situation. With three active boys with Type 1 Diabetes it is generally all but impossible to get all of them to have numbers in range. Inevidably, one of them is too high or too low. I am set up to fail. And honestly, it used to get me down...really, really down. I would wallow in the self pity of bad momdom, and think that I am a failure as a mother. I would think that I let them down, and agonize over the thought that their future health lay in my hands alone. Night time sugar checks became the bane of my existance. "Who will I let down tonight," I would think.

Then last summer something happened to change my way of thinking. We were at Diabetes Family camp and J came up to me and said he needed to talk. He had a counciling session with his group, and his councilor told him he needed to talk to me about his feelings. He said, "Mom, I feel like whenever I check my sugar and the number isn't in range, I let you down. I see the look on your face and it makes me feel awful. I hate it when I disappoint you with bad numbers."

HUH?

All those times when J would check his sugar I was feeling awful that I was letting him down. And for years he took that as I was disapointed in him, when truely I was disapointed in myself. I had to convice J that I NEVER was disapointed in him, and actually had always been proud of the way he's handled his diabetes. It wasn't long before we decided that we were in this together and both of us were doing the best we could. From then on there were no more bad numbers. They were all good because they gave us the information we needed to fix the situation.

Do I have bad days? Yes. Sometimes it's like it is all out of control and I feel like crawling in a cave. When it gets that way I call my endo, who obvioiusly I have a close relationship with, and say, "Help me fix this." I usually change basel rates on my own, but I have learned to recognize that sometimes I am too overwhelmed to figure it out by myself. Now, when that 400 pops up I can say, "Fix it." and forget about it. It is what it is...a number. And I am thankful for those numbers, good and bad. Without them I would be like those parents long ago who had to wake their children at night and see how hard they squeezed their hand.

 I think not knowing at all is scarier than a 400.