Another big step! Tonight The Mr.and I are going out and leaving the kids home. The Drama Queen will be babysitting The Karate Kid and giving him his insulin at bedtime. I am a little freaked out about it.  But back in May I ordered tickets to see Jeff Dunham. The Mr.and I get a kick out of him. I think I was a fan of the Jalapeno on a Stick way back in the Half Hour Comedy Hour days… was that VH1 or MTV… I think it was MTV… We have caught his shows on The Comedy Channel and he is really the only one that gets me to laugh consistently all the way through. I remember how excited I was about getting the tickets. Then not so excited because I was planning on taking two weeks of vacation instead of just the one and then realized that show was during the first week. But really the thought of two whole weeks with out The Mr.wasn’t really sounding all that fun. Then The Karate Kid got sick… and the idea of leaving him really tore me in half… The idea of never getting to get out without him again hurt even worse. So I talked to The Drama Queen to see how she would feel about giving him the shot and she was a little freaked, but watched me a couple times and then did it herself without hesitation. The Karate Kid said that she didn’t hurt him as much as I did. Heh!

And really, we can’t afford to just throw good money away, right? Besides I could use a laugh or two… or twenty!!

 

So in the last week we have had our first visit with the nutritionist, had our water heater die a horrible and messy death, bought a brand new water heater, had the lovely plumber over, (who showed me his entire rear-end while installing our oven some time ago, guess plumbers crack is so last century) to install our new water heater &  had our follow up visit with the CDE At least for all the water heater stuff I could shell out tons of money from the comfort of my home. The nutitionist and CDE visits require looooong-ass drives. But I am totally over that because I don’t have to worry about doing that again for another month… and then after that it will probably be every three months… and we may be able to transition to a satellite hospital closer to us.

The Karate Kid is doing great. He decided a few days ago that he was going to do all the glucose checking on his own. So he is doing his own finger pricks and using the monitor and then I record the results and give him his insulin. This is a big step for him and it was all his own idea so I am pretty excited and proud about that. Funny how the little guy who just a month ago was crying because he was going to have to go to his primary care dr for a check up and had to have blood taken from his finger for the usual checks. He asked me today if perhaps they will let him do it himself next check up. The mark the nurse left on July 15th has finally healed up. I am sure that had a lot to do with how dehydrated he was and all the other symptoms that went with it.

We got a copy of one of the letters sent to Karate Kids primary and it had a lot of info I didn’t know or didn’t remember because that first night is such a blur. I do remember his BG count was around 990. His A1C test was over 11% (a healthy person should be around 4 or 5% I think) don’t know about the Ketones. I know that it was high.

And we got the orders for the school nurse for the beginning of the school year. I will have to pick up some supplies and refill some prescriptions… probably will do that tomorrow because I am going to need some things before we go away. I am really nervous about that too. Being in the middle of nowhere is really great, but being in the middle of nowhere with a newly diagnosed diabetic… not so much. Mentally I am equipped. I have all the tools and the instructions to care for him. Emotionally I am a wreck. One of the big things my family loves to do on vacation is eat… and not a lot of good stuff. It is going to be difficult trying to balance all that. I’m not really all that worried about that, because he knows how to balance his carbs himself. Tonight for instance he decided to forgo the chocolate milk so he could have a little ice cream. The lows are what scare me. What could happen during the lows terrifies me. Then again on the bright side we will be vacationing with my BIL who is a paramedic.

I don’t even know where I was going with this post. I am constantly looking for silver linings. They are there… I see them. Still… if I was offered a do-over for this year I would so take it!!

 

I Have to Laugh or I’ll Go Nuts.. Or Maybe I Am Already Nuts

So about two months ago, before Karate Kid’s diagnosis, The Mr.  tries to get something at the store and his debit card doesn’t work. It is pretty worn out on the back, so they tried to key it by hand. It came up declined. He comes home and tells me and I, of course, have a fit. I go back with him and use my debit card because I know there is money in there and it goes through fine. I begin to wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the bank account for the store was overdrawn because of fees (the loan bank kept trying to get their money even after we forfeited the store). I tell him next chance he gets he should get a new one. Course with the possiblity that it is because of the overdrawn account he puts this off. This is a real pain in the ass because he has to use mine and I end up without it for days on end. So we get notice that the business account is closed and the have notified the interested reporting agencies etc. They won’t be after us any longer for that. So then The Mr.tries his card again… and again no luck. So on the next free day he had (which was yesterday) he went down to get a new card. He goes to the teller who tells him there is some kind of alert on the card. He is sent over to the asst manager who tells him the card was canceled because someone used it to try to buy something in Amsterdam for $2500… Luckily there wasn’t enough money in the account to cover it so it was flagged and viewed as suspicious. It may be that his card number was stolen after shopping at Hannafords, but we can’t find any proof that he actually shopped there with the debit card.. so who knows. Anyway they issued him a new card. I have looked over our statements and there is nothing out of the ordinary there. I guess we got lucky!!