Spring Break

This was almost 2 weeks ago now, but here we go….

It was a great week.  We started it off with the Diabetes Boot Camp that weekend.  Again, that was such a nice time for all of us.  Then, on Monday, I took the girls over to my parents’ house to pick up sticks with other available cousins.  Sam, Cale, and Landen were all able to come.  It made the work less tedious and more enjoyable.  Afterwards, the girls asked if Sam could come over for supper and a movie.  While at first I was hesitant (I had nothing in my mind to make and sometimes that is stressful for me), I relented, and he came.  It was a good choice.  Those three have a lot of fun together.  They played on the trampoline while I scrounged around for dinner – Flatbread pizza.  Then, we all watched the movie, The Game Plan.  We wouldn’t have picked it on our own – it has a football player on the cover, but it was a perfect choice.  Afterwards, we took Sam home.

Tuesday, Megan came over to play and for the night.  We made plans to go see Mr. Berg’s Hereford calves at his place.  The girls really enjoyed watching them. Then, they came home and played lots of things – trampoline, Barbies, make up and other stuff I don’t remember.  They usually get along quite well, but occasionally having three of them can be a little hard.

Wednesday,  I took a meal over to a family in our church that had twins about 5 months ago; they also have two other young boys.  It was so good to talk with them and see the newest additions.  They were adorable.

    

we met ALL the cousins and aunts and uncles (except Luke, Steph, and Jeremy) for bowling at Wayne Lanes.  We bowled 2 games and had a lot of fun laughing trying new bowling approaches, and competing.  Sadly, I will say that my hamstring on my left leg hurt the next day slightly… bowling is a sport!

         

Thursday, we made a reservation to go to the Massillon Recreation Center.  We had never been there, but I had heard really good things about their pool.  The girls LOVED it!  There were only two others families there, so we never felt squished; it was really my kind of pool environment.  The water was warm – a huge criteria for me.  There were two big slides and a really fun lazy river to play in.  It took about an hour, but all of us went down the slides.  Ellie was the most hesitant, but she did it and she couldn’t stop doing it once she started.  Same for Madison who went first and never stopped.  I definitely preferred the open slide to the tube slide. 

    

Friday and Saturday were catch up, grocery shopping, laundry type days and Sunday was Easter (see next blog).  It was a great week. We had enough planned that it was fun, but not so much that we felt like we couldn’t just sit down or hang out. 

And Pepper is finding new places to hang out.  Lately, it has been on a share … or the top of … our new table.  Not sure the appeal.  Maybe he likes feeling bigger?

CGM

Ellie finally got her CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) on Friday, March 26.

I had been on the phone with insurance and the medical supply company and the doctors office for at least 4 weeks trying to get the paperwork pushed through.  I was calling almost 2-3 times weekly to follow up on conversations.  I talked to new people almost every time I called.  The truth was it felt like the one thing I could do to make life a little easier for Ellie – and it wasn’t moving along very quickly.  It was exasperating. 

Finally, they said when I called on the 19th that it was released to the warehouse to ship.  I tried to make a training appointment with the doctor in anticipation of receiving it.  They said I needed to have it in hand before the appointment would be made.  It arrived on Tuesday, March 23, and I asked firmly, but politely, if we could have appointment by the end of the week.  We were having our Diabetes Boot Camp, so we could use this as another tool of education.  They fit us in on Friday afternoon at 1pm… an early release before Spring Break. 

What is the CGM?  This is a small device worn on the body to measure blood sugar levels continually.  It has a small tube that sits under the skin.  A transmitter affixes on top of that and sends a reading to Ellie’s phone every 5 minutes.  It is amazing.  We got the DexCom G6.  It has an applicator to put the sensor in (thing with the orange button), a transmitter to send the signal (small piece rimmed in purple), and then a receiver or your phone. It can be worn on the love handles/upper bum area, the stomach, or the back of the arm.  You wear it in one of these locations for 10 days and then change the location to give each place a break. 

    

It is an amazing piece of technology.  We don’t know the power of how to use it yet, but I can imagine it would help immensely once they teach us even more. 

Here is the thing… Ellie has very little body fat.  She is active, healthy, and growing.  Often these things are placed in places where there is body fat for two reasons: 1) to get a good reading, and 2) so it doesn’t inject and sit right in the muscle. 

We picked the stomach as our first placement site.  We thought it would be most out of the way.  Ellie had researched if it hurt; by all accounts, people said no.  Well, it does occasionally hurt.  It hurt her more at the beginning to move positions from sitting to standing to laying down to bending over.  I am not sure if it was the tube inside poking at a muscle, heightened nerve endings, the adhesive tugging at skin, or all of those things.  At any rate, it wasn’t as comfortable as we imagined it would be. 

Frankly, she is ready to be done with it.  I told her she has to give it a month.  It gets her out of constant finger pricks for blood sugar readings four times a day.  When she started doing those, she didn’t like them either.  So, I said she needed to give the DexCom the same amount of time to adjust to it.  By the time a month is over, we can try it higher on the belly, on a love handle/bum, and on the back of the arm.  Hopefully, one of these will be most comfortable. 

As the week has progressed, she has gotten more comfortable with it with less pain.  In fact, she is jumping on the trampoline, swimming, and bowling with it!  I say that’s all good. 

This is a journey and it is not an easy one.  The newness has worn off and now we are caught in our new normal – count carbs, talk about food, measure food, look at numbers, think about the next step, adjust to new things, work through pain, etc.  It is amazing to watch Ellie maneuver through all this – sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes upbeat, sometimes just Ellie.  Any and all of those emotions are good to see.  One day, I hope that this wil just all process in the back of her mind and it is a fluid navigation of the day.  We are just not there yet.

Diabetes Boot Camp

One thing about Ellie’s diagnosis is that in some ways she is less independent.  Before on a Saturday morning, she and Madison would get up, play, eventually make breakfast, and eat.  That can pretty much be the same, but either Jeremy or I help with the carb counting and insulin shot.  So, she needs us again.  While that it okay and understandable, it has been a little bit of a transition I wasn’t ready for.  It also means that going overnight to her cousin’s or grandparent’s house becomes a little trickier. 

Enter “Diabetes Boot Camp”.  No, it wasn’t really called that, but I felt it needed a name. 

Jeremy suggested we take the grandparents away to a cabin for a weekend retreat and learning experience.  it would give us all some time to hang out, get away, and build memories while they practiced counting carbs and administering insulin.  It worked out to go the first weekend of spring break.  Jeremy found a nice Air BnB in Seneca Lake – only 1-1/2 hours from here.  It had a perfect number of bedrooms, good hang out spaces, and a kitchen for meal times.  Oh, and we could take Pepper!

We left around 4:30 on Friday, stopped for supper at Cracker Barrel, and got to the house around 7:30.  We quickly unloaded the vehicles, explored our new place, and prepped for bed.  Grandma Yoh had the first shot of the weekend.  And so the rest of the weekend went – grandparents were assigned meals and insulin shots so everyone knew who did what. 

What I hadn’t really thought about was how stressful this was going to be for Ellie.  That’s a lot of new, inexperienced people giving her shots.  It was also a new environment.  It ended up going okay, but her blood glucose numbers trended high all weekend, probably due to stress. 

Saturday was a beautiful day.  We had a big breakfast then hung around the house in the morning. 

After lunch, we decided to head out to the lake.  Jeremy had brought his kayak, so he took that out. 

    

The rest of us took the path up to the playground area to hang out. 

    

After about an hour, we headed back to meet Jeremy.

           

Then, we went to check out the beach (closed for swimming, but open to look at).  While there, my dad started talking to a couple having lunch at a picnic table.  The wife was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes too!  So, Ellie went and said hello with Grandpa helping her. 

Back at the house, the girls played a fun game that Grandma Yoh had brought along.  It was a paddle and koosh ball type thing.  They had fun. 

    

Jeremy grilled chicken for the Chipotle Chicken and Rice bowls – one of our favorite meals.  We dove into supper, ravenous from our day outside.  We ended with Ellie’s homemade brownies and ice cream. 

We tried to get to bed a little earlier Saturday, but I don’t think we managed.  We were all pretty tired – Pepper included!

    

On Sunday, it was raining as we ate breakfast and packed up.  We were definitely thankful the weather we had on Saturday to enjoy. 

We stopped at Freddy’s Burgers for a light lunch on the way home. 

It was a good weekend – both as a getaway and a training camp.  I think the grandparents are somewhat more confident in hosting Ellie at their house, but I think they will also want us nearby (not out of state) when we leave her the first time. 

Happiness is being with your grandparents….