Month: October 2015

Trick-or-Treat Cheat Sheet

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When our children were very young, we trick-or-treated in a neighborhood of Los Angeles where our good friends lived. It just so happened many scenic and sound design, as well as prop folks, who worked in the movie industry, lived here. Hollywood loves Halloween. It was not uncommon for a home owner to create a haunted house in his or her front yard, or for macabre Halloween scenes to be staged in rented trailers and placed in driveways.

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As new parents, this holiday geared toward children, celebrated in a truly fantastic way, hardwired its way into the robust and fun experiences we wanted to give our children in their childhood.

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Fast-forward about 1,800 miles and almost two years, when our son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes; last Halloween was his first trick-or treating experience with type 1 diabetes. Halloween is just one of the many occasions that makes parents of children with type 1 diabetes more creative, vigilant, and exasperated.

I understand, there’s multiple ways for families living with type 1 diabetes to navigate Halloween: a candy buy back, or perhaps a “switch witch” leaves a desired toy in exchange for a pile of candy.

Last year, I fretted and worried. We put out a teal pumpkin, and yet I was determined that our son would experience every ounce of this holiday, just like any other kid with a fully functioning pancreas. Secretly, I was prepared for a candy buy back. I had a roll of quarters ready, as well as a really neat Lego set two swap for candy, but we didn’t need either.

What we did need, was a really cool cheat sheet that listed common candy servings and carbs. There’s lots of lists out there, but we used one from the JDRF. Here’s this year’s JDRF Candy Carb Counts. I printed several copies to keep in my back pocket and invested in a nice Surefire flashlight. I cranked Henry’s basal up a bit, and in the oncoming cold midwestern winter, this fireman raced door to door, eating chocolate along the way.

Henry's first Halloween with type 1 diabetes

Henry’s first Halloween with type 1 diabetes

You know what? He went low, a couple of times, but no problem. We had a whole bag of fast-acting carbs to deal with that.

Teal Pumpkins Are Hard

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So, there’s this awesome dad, who hand delivered notes to his neighbors before Halloween, to explain that his son was on a Ketogenic Diet, and could not have any sugar because it could trigger seizures. The father attached a small toy to each letter, so that his son, like any other goblin, witch, or ghoul, could enjoy trick-or-treating.

Parenting is a paradoxical slog into empathy, sacrifice, and joy. Now complicate that journey with a condition, syndrome, or diagnosis, which means one guiding hand tries to soften the blows the world will deliver, while the other toughens the exterior to face the world. Sometimes, the right confuses the left.

After our three-year-old son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, we started seeking out opportunities that would simultaneously educate and prepare our son for the world and the world for our son.

There’s a teal pumpkin project, whose pledge promises “extra kindness to kids” by supplying “non-food treats at the store like glow sticks, stickers, bracelets, and more” on Halloween (www.foodallergy.org). Last year was our son’s first Halloween with type 1 diabetes, so we had a teal pumpkin and passed out stickers, play-dough, and tattoos instead of candy. He trick-or-treated in our neighborhood and collected 100% candy, which we let him eat a little bit of over time, and with a lot of extra insulin. The left and the right.

This year, we were planning the same, but teal pumpkins are hard. While searching for non-food treats at the fourth store in two weeks, I encountered this display:

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in the health food section of our local grocery chain, next to boxes and boxes or gummy treats, which have 17 carbs per pouch, and are most certainly food, violating pledge item #2: “non-food treats.”

So, instead of optimistically shopping in the adjacent town for Halloween non-food treats, I bought three bags of Smarties. I figure the left over Smarties, (6 carbs per roll), will become medicine for my son to treat hypoglycemia.

Ironically, I’ve seen more information and displays about teal pumpkins this year than last, but less feasible ways to create a teal pumpkin trick-or-treating experience. I suppose, with most awareness campaigns, it’s two steps forward and one back. On one hand, it’s good that there’s increased awareness, but the increased awareness shines light on just how gaping and insurmountable the problem is.

Really, I’m not that concerned with how difficult it is to create a house that can host the teal pumpkin project. Rather, I’m concerned with how easy it is not to. I live in the midwest, a region famous for producing corn. Sometimes, I drive just outside of town and am bewildered at the fields, both magnificent and damning.

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What I see has implications beyond type 1 diabetes. I see a tradition of family farms lost to big agribusiness. I see feed-corn, industry, profit, hardly getting-by, and fields and fields of soft drinks (and let me be clear, in the right moment, a soft drink could save my son’s life). I see candy that’s nested in bowls and handed out at banks, offices, and parties. What I don’t see is how we greeted each other before a shelf-stable promise of sweetness.

When my sister and I were little, we trick-or-treated the length of our mile-long dead-end street, past an eerie cemetery, where westward settlers who died on the stagecoach route in the 1700 and 1800s were buried. The very last house on the street was famous, in the neighborhood, for giving out decidedly tongue-in-cheek treats. One year, each trick-or-treater got six pennies, another year a box of raisins; my two favorite years they passed out dental floss and toothbrushes. Kids were always milling around the house, exclaiming in mock-protest, outrage over their treats. But the owners’ message was clear: “You made it this far, now take care of yourselves.”

The message about teal pumpkins is out, but why is it only one day a year? Why are there bowls of candy in offices? Why do kids meals come with free soft drinks and desserts? When did we cross the message of care with sugar?

Cousins First, D-Cousins Second

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I helped ease my sister back onto her hospital bed when the afterbirth pains had passed. I stood over her, but she was already asleep, a grimace  of pain and sadness etched her frown, even in sleep.

Less than 24 hours ago she’d had an emergency cesarean to deliver her 33 week old twins. Baby B was showing distress. The twins where delivered at 5:06pm and 5:08pm, and whisked to the NICU. Rebecca and her husband were called into the NICU at 2:00am to meet their babies, but before she could see her babies, still in the wheelchair, the doctor asked if they’d had prenatal chromosomal testing. Twins are automatically considered high risk, so they’d had every test. She was told her son had Down syndrome before she ever got to see or touch him.

She was told how the world would see her son before she ever saw her son. When any infant or child is diagnosed with a condition, syndrome,  or disease, the parents need to grieve for the life they’d expected for their child, then, without much flourish, put that life away and show up for the life that is. Rebecca showed up. Before Everett was discharged from the NICU, he had a team of therapists waiting for in-home visits.

When Rebecca and I talk about this moment she asks, “Why wasn’t I allowed to meet my son before someone told me what was wrong with him? Why did someone tell me what my son couldn’t do before I saw him? Why can’t people see what he can do?”

Two months later, the twins were healthy and home, but my husband and I were in the hospital with our son, Henry, who was just diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. A week later, we had our first follow up at our local doctor’s office, and the nurse not so much asked as  stated, “Your son, he’s the type 1 diabetic?”

“No,” I said, thinking of my sister. “He has type 1 diabetes.”

Just like his cousin, my son has a diagnosis that will define him, but much of their battle will be for a people to see them as people first. Rebecca knew this all along. Person first language.

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Cousins first, D-Cousins second

About a year after her son’s birth, my sister delivered this speech to a group focused on advocacy for Down syndrome (DS).

Two. This number began popping up in my life. Two blue lines on the home pregnancy test. Two embryos. Two fetal heart beats. Two tiny bodies growing inside of me. Two heads, two hearts, two souls, two babies to join our other two children at home. Everett and Vivienne were born two minutes apart. At two in the morning, only seven hours after they were born, we were asked what chromosomal prenatal testing we did.

I am a planner, so we did every check, test, and measurement throughout the entire high risk pregnancy. Apparently because they are twins, Vivienne “covered up” many of the markers all the specialist and doctors would have looked for with Everett. Before I got to even see or hold Everett, one of my two perfect babies, I was told what was “wrong” with him.

Days later we were shown his karyotype. A karyotype is a picture of a person’s chromosomes. Instead of two 21st chromosomes there were three. Everett has Down syndrome.

The next day was Christmas Eve, and I as discharged from the hospital, but I left my two premature babies in the NICU. They were born two months early, but the babies got stronger, and so did I. Daily I would visit them, but I was torn between the two isolettes.

Not having a prenatal diagnosis of DS forced me to hit the ground running. I had planned for my son to have one life, but now I was planning for him to have another. I looked for specialists, services, groups, funding, schooling, and opportunities for my son.

When Everett was two months old he started receiving services through our state’s early intervention services and as a two person team, we created plans, goals, and outcomes for Everett. When we came across an issue like feeding, sitting, or playing, we problem solved together. Two heads are always better than one.

During the peaceful moments right before bed I think of my two perfect babies and how they came into the world too early. I take their hands or caress their cheeks and I think of all of their cells and chromosomes in their bodies that make them who they are. I can imagine Vivienne’s Karyotype: the two 21st chromosomes next to one another. Then I think back to the time in the NICU when I was alone and scared, when the geneticist displayed Everett’s Karyotype to my husband and me. I remember those three 21st chromosomes lined up next to each other. Now I know that three is just as good as two. Maybe three will be my new lucky number.

Rebecca and Everette

Rebecca and Everette

Hello, We’ll Talk About Diabetes

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In 1919, eleven-year-old Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of Charles Evans Hughes,
Justice of the Supreme Court, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a death sentence. At the time of her diagnosis, children with T1D survived an average of 11 months after diagnosis. The only “treatment” was the Allen diet, a slow starvation—  eating about 400 calories a day from foods like “thrice boiled cabbage” (Total Dietary Regulation in the Treatment of Diabetes).

L: a child with diabetes on the starvation diet, R: same child after treatment with insulin (photo credit: trumanlibrary.org)

left: a child with diabetes on the starvation diet right: same child after treatment with insulin (photo credit: trumanlibrary.org)

Fortunately, Elizabeth was among the first American patients to receive insulin in 1922. She grew up, married, had three children, and died at age 73. When her children were young, she never told them she had diabetes, not even after her oldest son witnessed her convulsions from a severe episode of hypoglycemia. In fact, it wasn’t until her children were grown that she took each child aside and told them privately that she had diabetes.

Her secrecy made sense. She’d been handed a death sentence at eleven. Even after the discovery of insulin, prognosis wasn’t good. Recently, The New York Times ran an opinion piece, “The End Isn’t Near,” by Dan Fleshler, someone who has been living with diabetes for 53 years. Fleshler was diagnosed at seven, and his doctors weren’t optimistic about his longevity, but he’s healthy and here, yet the looming predictions cut into the quality of his life.

A diagnosis of a disease or a condition creates a stigma, and there’s a deep drive to keep any stigma a secret. However, secrets around disease create misunderstanding, shame, and fear. If people with diabetes and their family members don’t talk about what it’s really like to live with diabetes, then it’s easy for misconceptions such as: “insulin is a cure” or diabetes is “easy” as long as the patient doesn’t eat sugar, to circulate.

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I met who someone who was open about T1D. Amy regularly checked her blood sugar and bloused for food without any fanfare and answered all our questions, but I had no idea what it meant to have diabetes. In fact, we were hosting a party, and I made tea sweetened with honey just for Amy, because I knew honey was lower on the glycemic index. I’d thought to measure the honey and let her know how much I used, but I had no idea why it would have been better for Amy to drink something with an artificial sweetener in it, which she did.

A few years later, our son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and I knew we would educate ourselves to help Henry live his life in the best ways we could. However, I thought we’d hunker down and live life with diabetes with relative quietness. And we did for a while, but we started noticing things, like when Henry hears the case of his blood glucose meter being unzipped, he holds out his finger without looking up from his Legos or iPad. We started reading information such as, Type 1 diabetes is increasing by 3% annually and affecting a younger and younger population, with some diagnoses occurring before a first birthday. There’s no disease registry, so T1D can’t be studied in a truly systematic way. Some insurance companies deny coverage for life saving and extending equipment, such as pumps and CGMs, for infants and children. Some schools don’t allow students with T1D to use smart devices, such as an iPod, iPhone, or iPad to help manage blood sugars.

It took me about a year to move from being a parent of a person with diabetes to an advocate for diabetes awareness and research. In fact, I think many parents of children with disabilities, diagnoses, and conditions, to their surprise, define themselves as  an advocate after the emergency settles into the daily.

So, for now, we’re speaking up, telling Henry’s story with the simple belief that story and science should work more closely together. This summer insulin turned 93 and Henry turned 5 in September. If we talk about diabetes enough, maybe one day we can talk about it less.

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#DOCtober & Advocacy

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Kerri Sparling is one of the first diabetes bloggers. Her blog is Six Until Me. Shortly after our son was diagnosed, I discovered her blog and quickly appreciated its humor, honesty, and heart.

November is diabetes awareness month, and many diabetes bloggers and advocates plan special media campaigns to generate awareness and fundraising for research. But before we get to November, there’s October.

Kerri has created #DOCtober, where the idea is to take a picture everyday and, “to see if I can find something diabetes-related to photograph for the month.  If I can, awesome.  If I can’t, that inability shows how diabetes can’t and shouldn’t always be front-and-center” (Sparling, “Photo Challenge: #DOCtober”).

So in the spirit of advocacy and awareness, here’s Semisweet’s first #DOCtober.

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Dinner of 52 #carbs by a mum & pumpkin #DOCtober #t1d

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Semisweet will participate in #DOCtober on its Facebook and Instagram page. Join us there as we document each day in October, some where diabetes is in the frame, and some where it isn’t.