Our view of the endocrinologist and the diabetes educator’s role has gone through many peaks and valleys in the last five years. Like the various stages of grief, our emotions have fluctuated.

First came a frightened vulnerability.

"Oh my God! I can't believe this is happening. What do we do? Help us."

Then there was anger.

"We've done everything you said to do. It's not getting any better."

Then depression.

"This absolutely sucks."

Then skepticism.

"We're wasting our time. What can the doctors possibly tell us that we don't already know? We know our son more than they do."

Then acceptance.

"I guess we're just going to have good days and bad days. It's the nature of this disease. We can’t expect perfection."

And finally, where I am right now. Back to vulnerability.

Tomorrow morning we’ll go back to being the patient and let them be the doctors at Charlie’s quarterly appointment at Children’s Hospital. I plan to ask simply and humbly, “what can we do to make things better?”

The Phillies just won the World Series. There’s a symphony of beeping cars, screaming women and minor explosives blasting outside my window as I write this. I pray that come morning, my car is still properly resting on all four tires.

As for his A1c, I’m going to guess it will be more of the same. The usual 8.0 or 8.1.

Though it would be pretty sweet if we had our own reason for a celebratory beepity-beep on the car ride home.