Pulling the break on the runaway train

A couple days ago I hopped aboard the “Woe Is Me Train” and added fuel to its fire so furiously, the train got completely out of control. It screamed down the tracks of my life, and in true dramatic fashion ran straight through my blog yesterday and then full tilt into my husband’s arms at lunch. You should have seen me barrel towards my husband at the restaurant…crazy hair flying in the wind, blood shot eyes…the only thing I contained were my hands, that a few minutes earlier waved like a Muppet over my head.

My husband, alarmed at the sight, asked me what was wrong.

As I poured out my heart a mile a minute…recounting all the words of my blog yesterday, referring regularly to the post on DiabetesMine, and using the words “High on Freedom” in every other sentence…my husband did what every gentleman would do…

He pulled the emergency break to stop the train and then carefully step by step helped me off until I was on solid ground again.

After listening to my rant, he sat thoughtfully in his seat for a moment before he offered this:

“I think you may have something there,” he said. “But I think that is just a small part of it all…I really think he is just lazy.”

I tried to explain to him that is what all the parents in the comment section thought, but really it was their childs bid for freedom from their diabetic lives. He didn’t totally dismiss it, but he insisted he knew something I didn’t. He insisted J was the mirror image of him when he was that age, and he knew some of what was going on in J’s head.

I value his opinion. I know men think differently than woman. So I let him plead his case.

He presented the facts.

* J checks his sugar every morning and boluses for breakfast on his own. He never forgets.

* We have told J that he only needs to check his sugar once before lunch at school.
For whatever reason, J ignores his snack alarm, and doesn’t test sometimes. (He was determined to get to the bottom of this one.)

* J boluses for his snack every day.

* J calls me after he has eaten his lunch every day and even checks his sugar then when he realizes he forgot to earlier. (Which if course, this number is of no help to me, but it is effort none the less.)

* J always tells me the truth when he doesn’t test. He isn’t lying to us.

* J will check when he feels low. J called us twice in the last two weeks before lunch saying he felt low, checked and had eaten a snack.

* J helps L check his sugar in kindergarten at least 3 times a week. He never complains about this, and always calls us to tell us the number.

* J always brings his monitor on a fieldtrip or the track when they run the mile and never forgets to test there.

In conclusion, he says, J is just not checking sometimes at snack. And after dinner he needs to be reminded to bolus because he has done his homework and usually B lines to the TV or his IPOD.

He insisted on picking up J after school for ice cream and having a talk with him. He was confident he could get to the bottom of it.

And you know what…I think he did.

It turns out his alarms to check before snack go off during Math time. Every day in Math the kids are split up in groups…each group has kids in different levels so the kids who understand the work can tutor the kids who don’t. Jack is a tutor, and when his alarm goes off he is usually helping someone with some problems, and turns it off to check later. But when the snack bell rings, all he can think about is getting onto the playground. Ryan and J came up with a plan to put a second meter in his desk so he doesn’t have to walk across the room to check. J seems to think this is a brilliant idea.

It is agreed that freedom is part of the problem, even if J doesn’t realize it yet. J insists that he has no “issues” with his diabetes. He honestly thinks it doesn’t adversely affect his life at all. Ryan was clear with him that, yes we expect a lot from him, but we would expect the same from all our children, diabetes or not. I even remember now Ryan having to take my older, non diabetic son, out to ice cream to give him the same “take your responsibilities seriously” talk.

Last night J hugged me before bed. He said, “I know you are worried mom, but seriously I’m not forgetting things on purpose…I’m OK. I was just stressed yesterday because we had three assessment tests for our report cards yesterday, and it really stressed me out.”

So I offer this new epiphany that came to me at 2:00am this morning…

Could it be…maybe I’m in denial here…could it be, that yesterdays freak out session had more to do with me than it did J?

That maybe I was so freaked out about handing J the playbook that I freaked out when he didn’t play the game by my rules. That I ran onto the field blowing my whistle like an overzealous coach and called a time out on his play.

That MAYBE I’m so scared of what MAY be coming down the road…that I called it before there was time to let it play out.

That MAYBE I’m not giving him a fair chance.

That MAYBE I’m trying to take back the control I handed over to him just a couple weeks ago?

Maybe.

I’m back in the bleachers. I’ve been kicked off the field. I’ll continue to scrutinize each play…but next time I’ll show more restraint. I won’t stop the game and cry foul all together. I’ll take the role assistant coach and help him figure out how to correct his plays so he can score, and make himself and his family proud.