Julia lives behind the Tofu Curtain, in the Pioneer Valley, in Western Massachusetts. It’s a nice place. She likes it there. She’d invite you in for a coffee, but the three kids, the hockey-playing Canadian husband, the Dog-Who-Sheds-A-Lot and the Cat-Who-Pukes-A-Lot mean that the house is in a constant, ever-changing state of chaos.
In fact, she thinks she used to have two cats but believes one is lost in the clutter. Either that or it decamped for neater surroundings. Her eldest daughter, Olivia, has type 1 diabetes. She’s also 13. It’s a real toss-up as to which is more difficult – the diabetes or the teen-age drama.
When she’s not trying to grab a nap, grab a toddler or grab a drink, she can be found here, on dLife or over at her other blogs (the ones where she swears with gay abandon) –
Major Bedhead and
New England Mamas. She’ll bend your ear on just about any subject. There are only two things that she won’t tolerate – bad grammar and dissing the Red Sox. And even the grammar can be flexible. The Red Sox? Not so much.
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Remember a while back, when I said Olivia was a pretty compliant, easy-going kid? Yeah, well karma just came and bit me in the arse. Holy mood swings, Batman!
I don't know what's going on with her (besides the fact that she's a 13 year-old girl), but I'm about at my wits end. She's sullen, she's mouthy, she's on the phone all. the. freaking. time. But what's really pissing me off is her failure to check her blood sugar.
Up until a week or so ago, I'd ask her every time I saw her eating something and before every meal, if she'd check. She'd say yes or no, depending, and everything was fine. Suddenly, though, I'm getting this attitude.
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I am not a religious person. I was raised a Quaker, which has directly influenced how I feel about religion. I understand people have faith, I respect it, I just don't.
But when I read about the family in WI who allowed their daughter to die due to untreated type 1 diabetes, preferring to pray for God to heal her instead, I was absolutely livid. How could you allow your child to stop talking and walking and just think that's ok? Just think that God will make it all better?
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We try really hard to stay away from high fructose corn syrup around here, although, man, that stuff is in everything! Even bread. I think there are two or three brands that don't have it.
Olivia used to drink a lot of diet soda. I'd buy a couple of 2 litre bottles every week for her, in addition to drink mixes like Crystal Light. Sometimes I'd make diet Kool-Aid, using Splenda instead of sugar. One week, I added up how much of my grocery money was going towards diet drinks and was apalled - it was easily $10 or $15 a week.
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Thanks for the input on my issues with Olivia's teacher. I'm going to follow up with her when they return to school this week, to see if the guy is still being a pain in the butt about it and if so, I'll contact him again. This is the part of diabetes that I hate - the beating it into people part.
For the last couple of weeks, Olivia's been having some major drama with her father. He doesn't see her, in spite of only living an hour away, and it's making her nuts. He'll call her, but he has one excuse after another as to why he can't come out here or why, if we happen to be out that way, she can't stop in for a few hours. It's really crappy.
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Yesterday was Earth Day and, as usual, I'm late to the party.
Diabetes care does generate a lot of waste. Olivia's on a pump, so she has tubing, cartridges, insulin vials and test strips that all wind up in the trash. For the last couple of years, I've been trying to figure out how, or even if, I could recycle any part of that waste.
For a year, we saved insulin vials. Last December, I popped out the rubber seals on 50 of them and strung them on some tiny, battery-operated Christmas tree lights. I'm thinking of doing that again this year and giving them out as presents to people - it would definitely be making a statement.
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Olivia hasn't had too many problems with her teachers over the years. Most have been very accepting of her diabetes and the care she needs to take with it while she's in class. I have a packet of stuff I give to all of her teachers at the beginning of each year and thus far, that seems to be sufficient.
This year, though, she got switched a couple of weeks into the school year. She got a new English teacher and I just assumed that the old one would pass along the diabetes info. Wrong.
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