Good morning from Chincoteague Island, VA
Good morning from Chincoteague Island, VA, we are are more then half way through our family vacation and i thought today would be a good time to check in with all of you and say hello. This morning around five Arden's DexCom CGM woke me when her BG dropped just below 90. I set a temp basal for an hour and snuck outside to take some pictures of the beautiful sunrise that the island enjoys.
We are having a great week and I hope you are too! Lots of relaxing, fishing (we don't catch much), beach bumming and enjoying downtime together. I'm mixing in the last bit of writing I have before handing in my book, 'Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal' that is due to the publisher in a few days.
Here are a few pictures from my sunrise photo walk that I just shared on Instagram... I guess that we'll be back to life before we know it, the kids just received their school schedules so they are beginning to countdown the days.
Be well, I'll be back (too) soon.Wordless (Instagram) Wednesday
Let's not mince words (especially since it's wordless Wednesday)... If you dig these pics, find me on Instagram.
@ArdensDay on Instagram (and Pinterest too)... see you there! For background info about these pictures head over to the 'Visual Record'.
New plan for school and a sweet daddy daughter moment
Arden was on the longest play date of her life yesterday. She went to her friend's house around four in the afternoon to swim and ended up staying until ten that night. I've never left her alone before this date but I wanted to use this opportunity as a practice run for our new school day management plan.
Arden was originally just going to swim and come home but our results were so good that she was able to expand the plan into dinner and playtime afterward. She and I co-managed her diabetes by text and phone with no help from adults on her end. Interestingly, her tone while we spoke on the phone was more confident and mature then normal. Almost like she put her big girl pants on when she was thinking about type I - which was very inspirational!
For the first three years of school Arden has visited the nurse every time that her diabetes needed tending to; before and after meals, activity, for highs and lows and so on. Those visits, while necessary and also very helpful to her maintaining a steady blood glucose level, took quite a lot of time away from her school day.
Thanks to a law that was passed a few years ago in New Jersey, children are allowed to test their blood glucose in the classroom where we live. I have been waiting for the time in Arden's maturation where I felt comfortable that she and I could co-manage her type I over text/phone without an adult present to double-check her steps. I decided at our last 504 meeting that third grade was the time to give this idea a try. Since then we've been adjusting our at home management routine to mimic this reality and last nights play-date was our first official test run. Arden doesn't of course think of all of this in the same way. That is, she was just on a play-date and not aware that I was testing my theories.
I was so happy with how smooth the evening went that I had no trouble extending the date twice as the evening progressed. When Arden returned home at the end of the evening she was pretty hungry and so she had a late-night snack that I covered with insulin, perhaps too completely considering the amount of swimming she did. Around four thirty in the morning all of her activity from the day caught up to her and she experienced a low BG.
When I checked her DexCom CGM it said 'low' and the graph indicated that she had been dropping slowly but steadily for the last two hours. When I tested her with a finger stick she was 42. I set a temp basal for an hour that eliminated her basal insulin and brought her a juice box.
I spoke softly to her to let her know that someone was in the room and when I saw a bit of life on her face I began to repeat, "your blood sugar is pretty low Arden, let's drink some juice". After the third or fourth time I spoke she waved her arm at me in a sleepy but annoyed fashion and then sat up, she looked at her clock and then in the sweetest voice you can imagine said, "good morning". I handed her the juice box and she began to drink, in between each long sip she would open her eyes just enough so that she could see me in the glow that my iPhone created. She smirked each time in a loving, not joking way and then bumped the tip of her straw into my nose. After a number of sips (and bumps) she tried to hand the juice back to me but I needed her to take one more drink. After that last sip she said, "okay daddy I'm done, going back to sleep now... thank you".
I told her that I would sit up for a while to make sure that her BG leveled out and she replied, "sounds good, I love you". I told her that I loved her too and adjourned to my room with a great big smile on my face. Then I busied myself on Twitter and read some emails to stay awake.
I am going to be blogging extensively about Arden's new management process at school over the first few months of the school year, I hope that you find those posts helpful as we move towards a more independent lifestyle for Arden. It should be interesting to say the least. Arden will be permitted to keep a cell phone with her in class and she will be contacting me directly when she tests, eats, feels dizzy and more. We are going to try and eliminate as many visits to the nurses office as possible. I'm very thankful for the open-minded way that Arden's school, teachers and nurses are approaching this change. I am sure that it is difficult for them to try something that is so outside of everyone's norm. It's very exciting to be stretching these boundaries for Arden and the other children that live with type I.
Book title announcement
The internet does so much to connect people and it accomplishes that feat by making the world a smaller place. I once believed that my voice couldn't transcend my little town, that writers didn't come from places like the one I lived. Due in no small part to social media we are no longer isolated from places, events and people. Everything that your mind can imagine is now at your internet enabled fingertips.
Last year I was graciously asked to write a little piece as a sidebar for a diabetes parenting book and the publisher liked what I wrote enough to not hang up on me when I, in the middle of an unrelated phone conversation, began to pitch my book idea like I had nothing to lose. Pretty gutsy for a man whose only other printed works were from an elementary school writing contest (see pic below). I began to tell the publisher about all of the experiences that I've had throughout my life living in what is generally considered to be a woman's world. I told a few stories and ended by professing my sincere desire for people to see their relationships and families through one another's eyes, a gift that our role reversal has given me. A few weeks later I was writing a book about being a stay-at-home dad.
I expect my next book to have a slightly nicer type set.
I've always hoped that I'd have an opportunity like this and I want you all to know that it's due in large part to your support of Arden's Day that I am getting this chance. I can't thank you enough for the continued love and support that you've shown me through our 'internet connection'. I am working hard to bring you the same honest, emotional look into life as a stay-at-home parent that I've tried to bring to type I caregiving. I don't think that you'll ever look at the primary caregiver in your family the same way again.
My book, 'Life is Short, Laundry is Eternal: Confessions of a Stay-At-Home Dad' will be available for Father's Day of 2013. The book tells a bunch of great stories from my 12 years of being a dad but most of all it's a love letter to the people that stay at home and raise our children. Being able to watch Cole and Arden grow is one of the true pleasure of my life and I hope that everyone will leave the pages of my book feeling the same way I do about loving and raising a family.
I want to thank Leighann from the D-Mom Blog for starting me on this road when she asked me to write a piece for her new book, Spry Publishing for not hanging up on me, WEGO Health for spotlighting bloggers that are writing books and my family who has been so understanding as I write these past few months - I promise I'll get back to cooking decent meals very soon!
I'm going to do my best to keep you up to date on my progress as the writing process moves forward. At the moment, I'm just writing and trying to hit my manuscript deadline of September 1st.
related links:
WEGO Health's Health Activist Authors series for online writers interested in making the jump to print.
I was 'Just Talking' with Chris Snider
The best aspect of the Roche Social Media Summit was meeting other members of the DOC, like Chris Snider. Chris has a fantastic podcast called, 'Just Talking' and he was kind enough to ask me to appear on it along with a bunch of other summit attendees.
The entire episode is a great listen with familiar DOC names (in order of appearance) like Cherise Shockley (who shares some exciting news about DSMA), Stacey Divone, George Simmons, Scott Johnson, Lee Ann Thill, Wendy Rose, Sara Nicastro, Kim Vlasnik and Kerri Sparling. My bit comes last at 41:00 where I announce the title of my upcoming book, smart mouth a bit about minor league baseball and talk about being the parent of a child with type I diabetes. It's a light conversation until Chris asks me about how I view my role in the DOC, then things "get real".
So if you are interested to hear how I think about type I blogging, want a spoiler about my book title (that isn't happening on this site until tomorrow) or are just interested in hearing my voice... check out 'Just Talking' by clicking on the image at the top of this post or by following this link.
Much of this episode is recorded at a baseball game so there is wind noise, however my interview happens indoors so it is very easy to listen to.