Forgiving the Forgotten: It’s all part of D Life

 

A fellow D-Mom posted on facebook today, her angst reading through like facebook had just installed emotions 3-D. (Thankfully, they have not yet).

For the first time since her child’s diagnosis, she’d forgotten to give him a breakfast bolus. And now, realizing it, the mother came to what some may think is an obvious conclusion: She’s unfit to be a D-Mom.

See -- it could be worse!

Okay, so dial back about 14 years in time. My daughter was a newly diagnosed kindergartener. I was still in the midst of adapting to all this. Mornings meant blood sugars, breakfast, carb counting, timing (that was back when there was Regular and no Humalog or Novolog. Oh, those were the days of challenge). I have an older child too so just getting it all in order and both of them out the door and off to school was like a top level Navy Seals operation.

So this particular day, I sighed my usual sigh of relief after they were both gone. I sat for a few minutes, and then walked back to the kitchen to pour my 1400th cup of coffee.

And there it was, sitting on the counter, sneering at me: the needle full of NPH I was supposed to give my daughter that morning.

It grabbed a little sun and glimmered up at me in that “I’m so much cooler than water” kind of way and said, “You. Are. A. Horrible. Mother.” I nodded at Mr. NPH, so potent even at just a few units. I knew he was right.

I grabbed the phone, dialed our practice and had our endo paged.

“Moira, what’s up?” He said in his usual chill, awesome, you-can-count-on-me way. Oh, how was I even going to tell him? I took a deep breath. And said this:

“Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned. I’ve forgotten to give Lauren her insulin this morning.” Then I burst into tears. “How could I forget the medicine that keeps her alive? How can I be this bad at taking care of her? What time will DSS be coming?”

He cut me off.

“Moira, Moira. Calm down. Listen, I want to tell you something: this is good news to me. Really good news.”

Huh?

He went on to explain, over my sniveling (hey, cut me some slack. That mean old NPH was sticking its orange tongue out at me the entire time as if to say “how could you NOT see me?”). Diabetes, he said, is a lifelong companion. It’s always going to be there (until the cure). And while it is indeed vital for parents to understand daily care and do the best they can, it is just as vital for them to help find a “new normal” for their family. Insulin doses, given a few times a day, are like lunch money to other parents, he said. And some days, parents forget the lunch money. Me forgetting her shot meant, to him, that I was making the transition back to just living life. And while he said it’s not a good idea to forget every day, it’s perfectly normal (and a sign you are working at adapting and living life) to forget from time to time. He reminded me it was fixable, and since I was still a freshman in the D-Mom Class of Until the Cure, he talked me through how to fix it. And told me, promised me, that I would forget again, and that next time, I’d know how to fix it and it would not be a big deal.

In other words, I was good enough to be a D-Mom, just as that mom who posted today is.

There’s a lot riding on perfection in this world in general, and in the diabetes world, it’s even more so, and it seems to be more and more assumed that we all need to strive for perfection. With better tools should come an easier life, right? And while I do agree that better insulin choices, smarter pumps and way better meters have indeed made life easier in some ways, I think they’ve made it harder in others. D-Parents have so much pressure on them now that we know how to check faster, control and correct quicker and see more into what’s going on in the child with diabetes body. And who doesn’t want to be perfect at this? I mean, we’d climb through fire for our children – why wouldn’t we try to have the tightest control we possibly can?

The trick is doing it all and still finding a way to let a kid be a kid and a teen be a teen and an adult be an adult. But how? As Jo March explained to the Professor in “Little Women” about life in a home of transcendentalists: “The thing about always seeking perfection is, that comes with much self criticism.”

I wish I had an answer. But I have tried to hold onto what that endo told me so many years ago. Diabetes or not, you have to live your life. No, you cannot ignore it and yes, it overlaps everything. But if you slip a tiny bit here and there, pick yourself up, fix the situation and pat yourself on the back for getting busy just living life.

Because you know, it goes for non D-Moms too. When my youngest was a baby, we were packing for our first Christmas day at my in-laws. Because she’d been in the NICU, there were quite a few meds involved (not d related). I had to remember both kids clothes, pjs to change into, the meds, gifts for everyone and the food I was assigned to bring. As we packed the car, I asked my husband to put the snowsuit on the baby. You know how you do that on the floor and their arms are all stiff, straight out from the snowsuit? So he did that. We finished packing the car and headed on our way. About ten minutes into the drive – out on the interstate, my toddler piped up. Here is what she said:

“Mommy? Where’s the baby?”

Holy $%^&. At home, on the floor. Yep. We forgot the baby.

Happy to say  said baby was smiling and watching the light on the ceiling. I thought it was hilarious. My inlaws? Not so much. But hey, you’ve gotta just pick yourself up, brush yourself off and laugh about it. Same goes with diabetes mess ups, if you ask me.

So forgive yourself. And ignore that snide syringe. In this case, his point is moot.

Survivor of the Great Snowsuit misstep of 1991 and the Shocking NPH Incident of 1997 -- happy to still be alive at 20 years old!

11 thoughts on “Forgiving the Forgotten: It’s all part of D Life

  1. Every now and then, when my 28 year old son in visiting, and about to go for a hike, or to town, or some thing he does just fine, every day, without me… I will say, in an embarrassed voice “I am so sorry, I am just thinking of ALL the times I forgot. But, do you have your insulin?”

    He’s really nice about it.

    He made the transition to normal life, long before I did.

    Great post.

  2. On Max’s first day of Kindergarten, we remembered all the D stuff, but neither one of us remembered he should have used the bathroom before we left the house! I delivered a peepee dancing child to the teacher that morning. Still laughing 13 years later…

  3. I forgot to give Jeff his Lantus once. I felt like a criminal, I was horrified, and left the party we were at as if it was a complete medical crisis from Greys Anatomy or something! He was fine, he didn’t even spike that high, but the panic I felt!
    I will also admit to forgetting to bolus for his breakfast,at least once, and not admitting to the school nurse why his number was so high. We all make mistakes, you have to forgive yourself and move on! Great post Moira<3

  4. Kids love to have a stockpile of stories for parental blackmail (my mom still hears about locking us outside to play in January b/c we needed fresh air – turned out we had pneumonia). Thank you for sharing! And for putting intensive management into perspective – there are times when I’m actually glad the Dex goes offline for a while, b/c then I don’t feel quite so compelled to worry about every data point. Great post! 😀

  5. Oh my gosh…I remember probably 17 years ago I dropped Jeffrey off and school and by the time I got home I realized I forgot his shot…now 13 years later he is doing fine, no side affects from that forgotten shot. Now the important thing to remember is “way” back then we only did one shot a day…go figure how I could forget that?
    Ardy, Mom to Jeff

  6. Moira, I totally loved your current story(ies) here.

    We sometimes had to feed first, give shot later. Well later never happened one morning and mid morning while he is at school i realize I did not remember his morning shot and of course he didn’t either. Nothing major happened, just ran back up to school, checked blood sugar and gave insulin.

    My bigger mistake was about 5 months after he was diagnosed, and we were at a friend’s house and the moms each had toddlers, Phil’s age. I had to give him a shot for dinner. I drew the morning dose of 5 units vs the dinner dose of one unit he should have had. He got to eat anything he wanted for the next several hours and i checked blood sugars every 2 hours throughout the night. Never made that mistake again. Distractions, whether fun or not can lead to big mistakes.

    Why didn’t I realize it until the minute after I injected with the syringe. Felt like an epic failure.

  7. My mom and I were traveling from CA to my brother’s house in Vegas for Christmas a few years ago and I left my insulin in CA. Didn’t notice until I needed to refill my pump on Christmas Eve – thank goodness for Walgreens.

  8. Wonderful post. We all need reminding that we are only human! My husband Bob often forgets to bolus and sometimes just doesn’t find an opportunity (client lunches, etc.) so if I forget to bolus Isabel and beat myself up about it, he sets me straight pretty quickly. Thanks for sharing, Moira. I really admire your approach to being a D-parent. I think we can all learn from you!

  9. I am writing from Blackberry while on break at work so have to make this short. Definition of a bad D-Parent: Never being there for your teenager when they were diagnosed and now as a 24 year old you are blind and on dialysis and your parents just put you in a nursing home 50 miles away. This is a true story of a young woman here in Oklahoma.

Leave a Reply to Ann Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *