Little test strips everywhere

So I'm cleaning out my purse the other day and among all the gum wrappers and scraps of paper in the bottom are 5 used test strips.  I emptied the laundry hamper: test stip; I cleaned out the van: test strips; my pocket: test strip, kitchen floor: test strip; Abby's backpack: test strip; bottom of the trash can in the playroom: 4 used test strips!  They're everywhere!  And they drive me insane!

I guess when you use 6 or 7 strips a day some of them are not going to find their way into a trash can, and they can really pile up after a few days, but, come on, they're everywhere!

So this blog will be all about me ranting about diabetes.

I hate diabetes.  It's stupid.  Period.

Abby was diagnosed when she was 21 months old.  She is now 5.  There is no cure for diabetes (yet).  When she was 3 years and 7 months she had been diabetic longer than she hadn't been.  When she is 52 she will have lived with diabetes for 50 years.  There are 1.5 grams of carbs in an ounce of milk and a 1/2 cup of blueberries is 10 grams of carbs.  These are the things that run thru my head in the middle of the night and during the day.  I count goldfish crackers, I weigh fruit, I measure cereal.  Day in day out, I have the routines that we must stick to.  I add up the carbs, I measure out the insulin, I poke my little girl in the butt.  This is our life, it's mostly routine and mostly it doesn't bother me.

Most of the time.

Every so often I get into a funk.  It happens around Christmas every year.  I send a Christmas card to the nurse who discovered Abby's diabetes.  That gets me thinking about the day she was diagnosed.  What a whirlwind.  Most of it is a blur, but some snippets of that day are crystal clear in my brain.  I remember trying to remain calm in the car as we drove back to the Barbara Davis Center and praying that it wasn't diabetes, then ransacking my brain for what else could cause her blood sugar to be so high and praying it was diabetes instead of some form of incurable cancer or something.  There are times when I just get tired of the whole diabetes thing.  Checking blood sugar, keeping a log, counting carbs, drawing up insulin, it gets a little old after awhile.

But then, sometime during my self pity cycle I start to think about how lucky we are.  How blessed I am to have a daughter with diabetes.  Before 1921 there was no injectable insulin and my daughter would have wasted away and died before our eyes.  She has one of the most well know and most researched diseases in the world.  There are celebrities with diabetes and they host charity balls and fundraisers.  Her teachers and school will probably have had kids like her before.  It's not incurable cancer, she isn't lying in a hospital bed somewhere or confined to a wheelchair.  She runs and plays and acts just like every other kid.  Yesterday she went to a birthday party and ate cake with all the other kids.

Sometimes she asks me why she has diabetes.  My answer is always, "because that is what God has planned for your life."  It doesn't go much past that answer right now.  Someday it will.  As Abby gets older and starts to take more control of her disease and she has to come to terms with it she will discover why she has diabetes.  When the time is right, God will reveal it to her.  I would kind of like it to be cured before she has to contemplate it to much, but I'm not holding my breath.

This summer she gets an insulin pump.  At least that is what we're praying for.  That should make life somewhat easier.  And maybe change my whole outlook on stuff.  Not to mention give Abby the most expensive accessory she may ever have.  Whatever happens in our future I know that God has blessed us with our beautiful little girl and He knows every second of her life, good and bad.  He is in control and that makes me feel a whole lot better.

Now excuse me, I see a test strip on the desk I have to throw away.