Thursday, March 31, 2016

Some Work Is Better Than No Work

Over the past couple of months, things had been relatively stable in the diabetes department around here.  Blood sugars had been within range for the most part; pump settings stagnant.

Lows are now plaguing our days and nights.  Lows are seeping into Joe's school days.

This morning, as we hopped into the car for his 6:45 a.m. high jump practice...

"I backed off your breakfast ratio...hopefully you won't go low this morning."

"mm"

"Are you missing a lot of class ... with all these lows?"

"No.  I just go back to class after I treat."

"Don't you worry about not doing your best work?"

"The way I figure it, some work is better than no work."

I didn't want to point out the time his science notebook was marked as incomplete, due to a week of lows and his going-back-to-class-low-plan lead to things not being glued into place, because in his hypoglycemic state...he "forgot" to use glue.  In elementary school and on up through 5th grade, Joe would stay in the Health Office until his low came up.  This go-back-to-class-low is somewhat new territory for us. 

I realize at some point in his life, maybe it's now, he should carry-on if he feels OK.  Life doesn't just stop and stand still during those 15, or more, minutes it takes to get back to euglycemia.
 
The day-in-the-life continues no matter what number he is.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't he treat the low in the classroom?

Unknown said...

He keeps his glucometer in the Health Office ( his choice). He likes to do his care in private. He does have sugar in his binder.

katy said...

My person just took a Spanish test, scoring 2 out of 25 points because he wrote "whatever" or "I don't know" on everything. He was at 46 mg/dL on the Dexcom. He didn't want to leave the test to take care of BG business (his stuff is in the nurse's office) because he couldn't deal with having to take the test during his "free" time instead. I feel sympathetic, but also like duhhhhhhhhhh.

Amy Lederer said...

Yep. This. I am finding that I'm learning diabetes all over again hitting pre-puberty/early puberty years. The stopping and correcting or treating is becoming more bothersome to him. And finding the right balance of being concerned about rules and numbers and not letting diabetes govern his life is increasingly hard. Makes the "old hat d-mom confidence" wane a bit. But I love this post. Somehow encouraging to me.

Colleen said...

I like and respect that you let Joe do it "his way." I have a young friend who is similar. It works for her. He's still so young. (Don't tell him I said that!)

Jonah said...

Diagnosed in college, I never left class for lows, never postponed a test for a low (or high) and didn't request extra time.
While it's true that there were lectures I didn't absorb as well, nonetheless, some is better than none. And in the three and a half years of college in which I was diagnosed with diabetes, I did worse on only one test because of a low. I think I wrote a blog post about it, but if not- I went into the test (history of math midterm) with a blood sugar of 33 (wasn't wearing a monitor yet) and when I got up to hand it in, I stumbled and couldn't find the middle of the professor's desk. I got two questions wrong, both because of errors were I didn't write every digit of a number (i.e. wrote 105 instead of 1057). Since that left me with a passing grade, I didn't try to make it up.

In the workplace, I can't really take 15 for every low (particularly not given that I go low at least 4 days in the average week).