I discovered yesterday that there's an enormous difference between staring at your mortality in the form of diabetes and in the form of debilitating pain that could quite possibly lead to a pretty poor quality of life.

Diabetes is manageable. A high is treatable. A low is annoying, and treatable. Diabetes is a hassle but it's livable. As I type this post I'm dealing with a 57 mg/dL post dinner reading that's giving me the shakes. It pisses me off and leaves me dying for a cure, but in the day to day scheme of things diabetes is -- or can be -- a blip on the radar.

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We're constantly weighing things. Weighing grams. Weighing negatives. Weighing the lesser of two evils.

On the soccer field at halftime I weigh the effect grapes will have on Charlie when his blood sugar is 260. I weigh this against the sadness he'll have if he's the only kid unable to enjoy a halftime snack. This one's easy though. I'll never ever subject him to exclusion.

But, how many grapes? I don't like that he's 260, but he's running around like a wildebeest for two hours. He should come down. Right? Well, maybe. He may also go up higher with all that adrenaline pumping. He may just stay the same somehow and then plummet later. I can't bolus him and risk a low.

But there's that difficult decision again. The rest of his teammates are reclining on soccer ball pillows and popping grapes like Julius Caesar and I've allotted Charlie a measly three. (READ MORE)