Cyclone Holding A Chicken?

My message to Joe's school's attendance line, which is manned by a friend, this morning (names have been changed for "privacy-sake"):  "Hi Lucy.  Joe will not be at school today.  He is still feeling under the weather.  He will, however, be at the play again tonight as long as he doesn't spike a fever.  And... George (Lucy's son) made a great monkey last night!"

Joe's school of fourth and fifth graders have been working diligently over the past several weeks to put on "The Wizard Of Oz".

Joe was/is part of the backstage crew... AND ... wait for it .... wait for it ... wait for it.....  He got the part of .... "The Cyclone".  No, the irony is not lost on me. 

Prior to last night though,  Joe had been telling me he was "The Tornado With A Hay Bale."  Uhhh, ok, so I am not all that artsy and I am by no means a meteorologist ....ah sooooo .... I really did not think about the "cyclone"/"tornado" thing and I just had visions of Joe twirling all willy-nilly across the stage with a hay bale  leaving a trail of straw in his wake.

So, the opening night was last night.

Yesterday, Joe had come home from school sick.  No fever.  Just a scratchy throat and lethargy.  He rested throughout the day and felt well enough to participate in the play last evening.  His blood sugars had been unpredictable and then subsequently on the rise.  At 4:30-ish I fed him dinner.  His blood sugar was 350, negative for ketones.  I smacked him with a good 4.5 units for his blood sugar and a cup of mac and cheese.

Off to the play we went.  Joe busied himself backstage and with his pals.  I hogged-up a bunch of seats and proceeded to wait for the hour until show-time.  Joe came by once to check-in with me.  No diabetes tasks were undertaken.  Dave, Bridget, and friends eventually arrived and filled the seats around me.  The play started.  I did not see Joe with the backstage crew.  I did not see a "Tornado With A Hay Bale" fling by on stage when Kansas was gonna be no longer.  I had not seen Joe in over an hour.

I got worried.

I had the Woodchuck.

Joe did not have sugar on his person.

He was sick.  He was 350.  He ate mac and cheese.  He had not checked a blood sugar in over 2 hours.  I had no clue where his number was (ahhh...do I ever?).

My visions of Joe were of him slumped over somewhere in the halls of the high school, the venue for the production.  Maybe he was slumped in the corner of the dimly-lit backstage area?  Perhaps he was slumped over in the bathroom.

All these visions of slump-age made me (and Dave) more and more uncomfortable.  I waited for a pause in the action and made my way out of the theater and high-tailed it to the backstage area.  I went to one side and asked about Joe. A scarecrow told me Joe was on the other side.  I trounced behind the stage to the other side.  There was Joe.  He was on the edge of the stage, waiting for a scene to end so he could go grab a hay bale.  He would not come off for a check until his duty of hay-bale-removing was completed.   Once hay bale #1 was removed from the stage, he came to me.  Gave me a finger.  I pierced it (yes, I still do this sometimes when he is focused on other things...like cool life events).  5-4-3-2-1.... a 194 graced the screen.

I asked him about the "tornado scene".  I told him I got worried when I didn't see him come out with the other "cyclones".  His response was, "Mom I was the first cyclone ... the one holding the chicken".

Nice.

A day-in-the-life of monitoring my "cyclone".