The Daily Grind.

When a child of yours is diagnosed with diabetes, suddenly you eat, sleep and breathe it. You wake up, you poke, calculate and give shots then do it over and over again. Interestingly enough, as this process is extremely tedious and often met with various forms of whining or fabulously formulated toddler-delay tactics, I guess it's not so bad.  It's sort of like after you have a 2nd kid - I could've SWORN having a newborn the first time (and an infant, and then a toddler) was way harder than it was.  I had a second, and everything took longer with two but the actual being himself (Mr. Max) wasn't nearly as difficult day to day as I remember Sierra ever being. Even though he cried for 7 months, but that's neither here nor there.

What I'm trying to say is the daily grind is intensive, sometimes frustrating, and often just... part of our day now. I remember when we came home from the hospital and started the new processes and I seriously thought we'd never get into a good flow. That meals would always be delayed a good 20-30 minutes trying to deal with wrangling my 3 year old for finger pokes then begging her to sit still for shots. Now it's all very robotic and even somewhat 'smooth' more days than not, even if it's still a little time consuming, I just don't notice any more.

I'll admit I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I just know that before our D diagnosis I genuinely didn't have the slightest clue about what it took to take care of and manage diabetes (naturally) and now that I'm in it, I wonder if I can really express to family, friends and curious onlookers exactly what it takes.

I hear how proud and impressed and in awe people are of how I'm dealing with Sierra's stuff, and I feel baffled. No, really, I mean it. It's very nice to hear that these people think I have my crap together and I'm doing well - and maybe I am - but you get so lost in the doing that it's hard to really take a step back and say "oh hey, yeah, I've got this!". I'm not sure with an illness like this that there is a lot of time or consideration for patting yourselves on the back, because the second you do the ugly side peaks out and kicks your butt off that little pony faster than you can blink.

I've started to think of diabetes as a particularly stereotypical jerkoff teenager. You know that there is *opportunity* for greatness. You SEE shades of greatness (in the form of a nice few days of really well controlled blood sugar and surprisingly great behavior), then just when you start thinking you've worked through your troubles WHAM! You're punched in the face for no good reason at all. At least none that you can really figure out. You literally change nothing on the outside, but apparently something chemical is going on inside that throws everyone and everything for a loop. Jerkoff!

On one of my diabetic support boards, someone posted "With diabetes there is no right. Just sometimes you're a little less wrong" (I'm paraphrasing, but this basically what was said). And that is so true.

There is no right in diabetes. And if you think you've figured it out, odds are it'll teach you a nice little lesson about assumptions. It's a real and truthful way of viewing it. We will always do our best, but I have to remind myself that in this life I've been given it's no longer up to me when we're going to have 'good' or 'bad' diabetes days. And there are plenty of both on the horizon, I'm sure.  Right now we're in a little lump of relatively good days, last week we had about 3 bad days. I suspect this will just be the way it is for a good while, and accepting that will be a big step for me.

I've decided Max has the best 'game face' for serious matters, so I think I'll set him on the insurance calls from here on out, and I'll leave you with this: