Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
T1 Family Camp
We attended our 2nd annual Family Camp this past weekend and just like last year, we had a great time! We are so lucky to have such a great support system among our friends and family, but it is always nice to spend 1:1 time with other families who truly "get it"! There's just something about the comradery that you build with other people who basically live the same life as you. It is also nice to spend time with the families who have recently diagnosed children and be able to truly say to them that "it does get easier" and know that they may believe you just a little more than someone else because you are speaking from experience. These are friendships that will last a lifetime I am sure.
Until next year...
Zane and Keegan (and her brother A.J.) - Keegan and Zane are definitely bonded for life (having spent the same days at Children's together, both diagnosed 12/20/10).
Zane and A.J. playing some ping-pong...these two really hit it off!
Zane & Luke playing soccer! Zane liked showing off his "high kicks"!
Zane and Luke getting a little helping hand from their daddy's!!
Nice to have a tall daddy!
Tinker Toys in the "Chill-Out Room"!
A special surprise today...sprint car race car driver Justin Youngquist (also Type 1) came by and brought his car for the kids to check-out.
Zane & Justin.
Zane sound asleep on the way home...success :)
Until next year...
80 Years Young
One of my most favorite people in this entire world turned 80 years old on October 3 - my grandma! My grandma has been my rock my entire life and I thank God everyday that she is healthy and still here to make my world complete. We threw her a little surprise party the weekend after her birthday and she was so happy! Of course this would be the time my camera decided to start not focusing well, so the one family picture I tried to get turned out a little blurry, but I suppose its better than nothing.
Happy Birthday Grandma, I love you more than words can express!
Happy Birthday Grandma, I love you more than words can express!
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Fun with the Hall's
Since I was off all week and Josh is working graveyard now - I needed to find things to do that were outside of the house as much as possible, so Josh could sleep in peace! Today's fun plan was to head to Orting and hang out with a couple of the Hall kiddos! Tate was in school, so sadly we missed him, but Zane was able to catch up with Kennedi and I was able to get in lots of snuggles with Miss Berkley (Landon wasn't always thrilled with me snuggling her though)! We had a great time!!
What all did we do that was so great you ask?!! Well...
Zane and Kennedi played Play-Doh...
Kennedi snuggled her baby sister for a bit...
I took lots of pictures of Berkley hoping to get a smile...finally did :)
Landon sat in a big kid bar stool to have lunch...
Landon gave lots of love to Faith...
We walked to the little park by their house...
Landon fell into a mud-puddle...
Not pictured, Landon stripped down to his onesie and we went home shortly after to wash up!
Great day - thanks for hanging out with us!
What all did we do that was so great you ask?!! Well...
Zane and Kennedi played Play-Doh...
Kennedi snuggled her baby sister for a bit...
I took lots of pictures of Berkley hoping to get a smile...finally did :)
Landon sat in a big kid bar stool to have lunch...
Landon gave lots of love to Faith...
We walked to the little park by their house...
Landon fell into a mud-puddle...
Not pictured, Landon stripped down to his onesie and we went home shortly after to wash up!
Great day - thanks for hanging out with us!
Dentist
Zane had his regular 6 month check-up/cleaning yesterday. He had his first ever x-rays of his teeth done and he did great - no cavities!!!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Pumpin'
Well, if you know me in real life or know me on Facebook you know that Zane started his insulin pump yesterday. I took the week off work to get familiar with our new family member that is attached to Zane's body 24/7 and I'm sure glad I did...because its been an eventful couple of days already!
I was told by many people that getting an insulin pump will change you and your child's life for the better, but that the first few weeks/months were like "diagnosis all over" because you are learning again a new life; how to care for your child and ultimately keep your child healthy and alive. There's a big difference in his actual diagnosis and this supposed "diagnosis all over" and that's that with his original diagnosis I had no time to think about it, no time to "prepare" for it, no time to be anxious about it - because I didn't know it was coming. With this - I have known about it for a couple of months, I've had that date on our calendar, I've had a countdown with Zane, and I've had time to grow very anxious and weary about it. The last couple of weeks before the "big day" were very hard for me...I had to keep convincing myself that this was a good idea and keep reminding myself that this is what Zane wants and needs and we do everything in our power to give him as much control as we can over his care.
The insulin pump we ultimately ended up choosing is called Omnipod it is the only insulin pump that is "wireless/tubeless". There is a little "pod" that sticks onto him and we have a PDM (Personal Diabetes Manager) that is basically a remote control for the pod on his body. Each pod has a cannula (catheter) that inserts into him (via the PDM telling it to), the insulin is given to him all day through that and whenever he eats we program the # of carbs he ate into the PDM and it then controls the pod on how much insulin to bolus him with for that food. Each pod needs to be changed and rotated to a new site every 3 days. He basically went from 5-7 shots EVERY DAY to just one "shot" every 3 days (the insertion of the cannula is basically like a shot). Not a bad deal! Every insulin pump has their lists of pros on cons a big pro for us on this one was that it was tubeless unlike the Medtronic pump we did a saline trial on. A con for the one we chose is that its pretty bulky, especially for a very lean kiddo - BUT there is a new on that should be coming out by January (hopefully) that is 46% thinner, so that will help a lot with the bulkiness.
Moving on...yesterday morning Zane received his last scheduled insulin shot via a syringe - he was a little psyched about that!
We headed to Children's Hospital bright and early so we could get trained on our pump and have it programmed with his information and insulin needs.
Zane is not a fan of the insertion of the cannula, not only is it a poke of course, but it makes a clicking noise that just drives him crazy...and you don't know exactly when its going to happen, so you don't have the same control over when the poke happens like you do on a shot. He was so excited for his pump, but once we were told he could not wear it where he wanted to (due to the fact he has absolutely no fat where he wanted it - stomach), he got really upset and then add the click on top of it and we had a small meltdown (both of us, haha). He powered through it and had a quick recovery and was instantly in love with it!
For the first 2-3 weeks its a lot of pretty strict instructions for Zane and for us because they need to make sure that the pump is programmed exactly right so he isn't at risk of having blood sugars fall too low or too high and causing him to get sick or worse...
These instructions are: no snacking between meals...he can have his regular breakfast, lunch and dinner, but no snack in between and no snack before bed (UNLESS he has a low blood sugar, than of course we treat with his usual of either juice/fruitsnacks/smarties). He can have "free" snacks which are snacks with 5 or less carbs - not many out there and not many he's willing to eat. He's had a lot of cheese the last couple days, hopefully that doesn't cause other problems in the bathroom :) The other big instruction is his blood sugar needs to be checked every 3 hours (including over night)...bye bye sleep! I always get up at 2:30 a.m. every night to check him, but now I need to make sure he is checked at midnight, 3 a.m., 6 a.m. I am not one to usually stay up past 10, so pushing it until midnight was a struggle last night - but worth it in the end! Once we know everything is programmed right and the risk of him dropping too low over night, then I can/will go back to the one check at 2:30-3 a.m., but for the next couple of weeks its going to be pretty sleepless!
This morning I was woken up at 8 a.m. (after all of the checks of course) by a loud screeching noise and it took a few seconds to figure out where it was coming from...his PDM, ugh! I ran out to it and it said "Communication Error. Pod Deactivated. Remove Pod" - I quickly called the support line and after a little troubleshooting it was concluded that for some odd reason that pod decided to stop working and we had to remove it and put on another one - oh great, Zane was going to love that news. I woke Zane up and explained the situation to him and he of course melted down :( Again, he powered through it and calmed down and we moved on. They are sending us out a replacement pod for free though, so that is nice - too bad that doesn't mean anything to Zane. But he did get a couple pieces of candy corn before breakfast...that did mean something to him!!
Fast forward to this evening and the boys and I met up with my friend Karena and her son Luke at the mall so the boys could play and Josh could sleep in peace! Zane was of course running around like a mad man and about 40 mins or so into their play time, he came running over to me, lifted up his shirt and this was the sight:
This is part of that "con" I was telling you about...the bulkiness...because of that it can be ripped out/knocked off easier if not careful - all a learning curve. But now, here we were in public with many children around (and watching mind you) and we had to put on yet another pod today (if you're not keeping count, that is 3 pods in 2 days and ideally you should only use 1 every 3 days).
I told Zane that I knew he didn't like doing this, but that there were other kids around and he had to try and be brave and not cry (not sure if that was the right thing to say as a parent or not), but it worked...he didn't cry! He jumped when it "clicked" him, but he didn't cry - my brave boy!!!
We taped this one down good when we got home, so barring no "Communication" errors, this guy should hopefully stay on the full 3 days - fingers crossed!
This was probably the world's longest blog post, but felt for documentation purposes it was all necessary and besides...I'm sure some people reading this might actually want to know all of the details!
I have one amazing little boy that's all I can say!
I was told by many people that getting an insulin pump will change you and your child's life for the better, but that the first few weeks/months were like "diagnosis all over" because you are learning again a new life; how to care for your child and ultimately keep your child healthy and alive. There's a big difference in his actual diagnosis and this supposed "diagnosis all over" and that's that with his original diagnosis I had no time to think about it, no time to "prepare" for it, no time to be anxious about it - because I didn't know it was coming. With this - I have known about it for a couple of months, I've had that date on our calendar, I've had a countdown with Zane, and I've had time to grow very anxious and weary about it. The last couple of weeks before the "big day" were very hard for me...I had to keep convincing myself that this was a good idea and keep reminding myself that this is what Zane wants and needs and we do everything in our power to give him as much control as we can over his care.
The insulin pump we ultimately ended up choosing is called Omnipod it is the only insulin pump that is "wireless/tubeless". There is a little "pod" that sticks onto him and we have a PDM (Personal Diabetes Manager) that is basically a remote control for the pod on his body. Each pod has a cannula (catheter) that inserts into him (via the PDM telling it to), the insulin is given to him all day through that and whenever he eats we program the # of carbs he ate into the PDM and it then controls the pod on how much insulin to bolus him with for that food. Each pod needs to be changed and rotated to a new site every 3 days. He basically went from 5-7 shots EVERY DAY to just one "shot" every 3 days (the insertion of the cannula is basically like a shot). Not a bad deal! Every insulin pump has their lists of pros on cons a big pro for us on this one was that it was tubeless unlike the Medtronic pump we did a saline trial on. A con for the one we chose is that its pretty bulky, especially for a very lean kiddo - BUT there is a new on that should be coming out by January (hopefully) that is 46% thinner, so that will help a lot with the bulkiness.
Moving on...yesterday morning Zane received his last scheduled insulin shot via a syringe - he was a little psyched about that!
We headed to Children's Hospital bright and early so we could get trained on our pump and have it programmed with his information and insulin needs.
Zane is not a fan of the insertion of the cannula, not only is it a poke of course, but it makes a clicking noise that just drives him crazy...and you don't know exactly when its going to happen, so you don't have the same control over when the poke happens like you do on a shot. He was so excited for his pump, but once we were told he could not wear it where he wanted to (due to the fact he has absolutely no fat where he wanted it - stomach), he got really upset and then add the click on top of it and we had a small meltdown (both of us, haha). He powered through it and had a quick recovery and was instantly in love with it!
For the first 2-3 weeks its a lot of pretty strict instructions for Zane and for us because they need to make sure that the pump is programmed exactly right so he isn't at risk of having blood sugars fall too low or too high and causing him to get sick or worse...
These instructions are: no snacking between meals...he can have his regular breakfast, lunch and dinner, but no snack in between and no snack before bed (UNLESS he has a low blood sugar, than of course we treat with his usual of either juice/fruitsnacks/smarties). He can have "free" snacks which are snacks with 5 or less carbs - not many out there and not many he's willing to eat. He's had a lot of cheese the last couple days, hopefully that doesn't cause other problems in the bathroom :) The other big instruction is his blood sugar needs to be checked every 3 hours (including over night)...bye bye sleep! I always get up at 2:30 a.m. every night to check him, but now I need to make sure he is checked at midnight, 3 a.m., 6 a.m. I am not one to usually stay up past 10, so pushing it until midnight was a struggle last night - but worth it in the end! Once we know everything is programmed right and the risk of him dropping too low over night, then I can/will go back to the one check at 2:30-3 a.m., but for the next couple of weeks its going to be pretty sleepless!
This morning I was woken up at 8 a.m. (after all of the checks of course) by a loud screeching noise and it took a few seconds to figure out where it was coming from...his PDM, ugh! I ran out to it and it said "Communication Error. Pod Deactivated. Remove Pod" - I quickly called the support line and after a little troubleshooting it was concluded that for some odd reason that pod decided to stop working and we had to remove it and put on another one - oh great, Zane was going to love that news. I woke Zane up and explained the situation to him and he of course melted down :( Again, he powered through it and calmed down and we moved on. They are sending us out a replacement pod for free though, so that is nice - too bad that doesn't mean anything to Zane. But he did get a couple pieces of candy corn before breakfast...that did mean something to him!!
Fast forward to this evening and the boys and I met up with my friend Karena and her son Luke at the mall so the boys could play and Josh could sleep in peace! Zane was of course running around like a mad man and about 40 mins or so into their play time, he came running over to me, lifted up his shirt and this was the sight:
This is part of that "con" I was telling you about...the bulkiness...because of that it can be ripped out/knocked off easier if not careful - all a learning curve. But now, here we were in public with many children around (and watching mind you) and we had to put on yet another pod today (if you're not keeping count, that is 3 pods in 2 days and ideally you should only use 1 every 3 days).
I told Zane that I knew he didn't like doing this, but that there were other kids around and he had to try and be brave and not cry (not sure if that was the right thing to say as a parent or not), but it worked...he didn't cry! He jumped when it "clicked" him, but he didn't cry - my brave boy!!!
We taped this one down good when we got home, so barring no "Communication" errors, this guy should hopefully stay on the full 3 days - fingers crossed!
This was probably the world's longest blog post, but felt for documentation purposes it was all necessary and besides...I'm sure some people reading this might actually want to know all of the details!
I have one amazing little boy that's all I can say!
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