I Feel Really Dizzy

It took three consecutive wins on one of the most grueling summer days that I can remember, for then eight year old Arden and her friends to become champions of their softball district in the summer of 2013.

If I recall correctly it was around the fourth inning of game two that Arden pushed open the dugout gate waving her hands at me. I jumped up and moved swiftly in her direction, she was repeating something that I couldn't make out until I got closer.

"I feel really dizzy."

Moments later I was in the dugout with Arden, I didn't bother to check her blood glucose before I gave her the first juice box. She would eventually consume over sixty carbs to get her blood sugar up to only 131.

Her BG dropped so quickly that the DexCom CGM didn't alarm until she was drinking her juice, by that time I had already tested – she was 37. The glucose monitor caught up to what was happening moments later and that's when I saw that not only was her BG 37, it was falling at a rate of greater than 3 points per minute.

Arden's spot in the line-up didn't come up in that inning and she didn't go back onto the field after her teammates batted. Arden spent that time lying on the bench with her head on my lap, waiting for the sugar to be absorbed. She told me that she was dizzier than she had ever been, her head hurt, she was flustered, a bit disoriented – it was one of the saddest things that I've ever witnessed as a parent. Until it wasn't.

Arden twice stood up during that time to check herself, hoping to feel better before her friends were finished on defense. She was beyond determined not to miss her at-bat that was due to come up when they got off of the field.  Twice she stood in front of me looking ragged while pressing her hands against her temples, trying in vain to make her head stop spinning.

I told this story after it happened but I'm telling again for my #DiabetesAndFear series because even though it's only been a year, I now have a more complete perspective than I did that day.

Last year I was proud of Arden for being tough in the face of adversity. I felt resolute, if not a bit unsure, with my decision to let her hit at her next at-bat. That was the narrative then, proud with a touch of diabetes can't stop Arden. 

Today I know that this moment taught us both a greater lesson. We live in a time where many parents try very hard to remove obstacles, no one wants to see their children struggle but I think that a person is made in those struggles and you find out what you're made of when challenged. In a world where I've seen kids leave a sports event because they skinned their knee, my daughter stood at the precipice of having a seizure, she did what she needed to survive – bore down and then won a championship.

This event happened almost 7 years after Arden was diagnosed. I would not have handled this the same way had it happened years earlier. When I was scared of diabetes this would have sent me running for our house and I may never have come out again. It is with great luck that I can tell you that other, smaller events like this happened before last year and they helped me to be able to find a calm focus on this day. Tomorrow, I'll tell you about one of those small moments.

I am reverent of what insulin can do and while there was a time when I was scared of it's power, watching Arden shrug off it's best punch taught me that this is the diabetes version of a skinned knee. Maybe it's not fair that this is our reality, but I am unwilling to allow the added concern to create a life of regrets. I am never reckless with my children's safety but I will be damned if I'm going to allow what was an anomalous event, to bring back the fear that enveloped me when Arden was a toddler.

Nothing diabetes can do to us – is as harmful as living in fear. You can believe me now or believe me later, but I can tell you this with certainty. I miss the time that we lost to being afraid and we can't get it back. 

#DiabetesAndFear don't have to go together.

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Guts Over Fear #DiabetesAndFear

In celebration of the seventh anniversary of Arden's Day, I'll be talking about Diabetes and Fear.

Now I know that diabetes and fear don't sound like celebratory topics, but they are the very words that we should be talking about. Too many blogs are about the good stuff, too many talk about just the fear – not nearly enough talk about being afraid and getting past it.

Hearing the words, "Your daughter has type I diabetes" was decimating. It felt like a universal force ripped me from my body, fundamentally changed who I was, how I saw the world and what I expected from life – then shoved me back into an unfamiliar corpse to live out a numb existence.

Even though I was never the type of person to wallow in a moment, that feeling didn't leave me for years. I was stuck, couldn't move forward and diabetes wouldn't let me move back. Most days I knew that I was doing the wrong thing as I passively allowed myself to not try and escape. I would tell myself that all I needed to do was move forward, I believed things would be better if I kept moving... but I just couldn't make myself do it. There were too many new unknowns and I was afraid of every one of them.

As much as I knew that moving forward was the only answer and even though I could feel that my inability to do so was going to have negative long-term effects on our lives; I spent every hour of every day trying to pretend that I was building a strong defense, but in reality, I was only allowing myself to be trapped by a specter that only existed in my new fear-formed heart. 

I knew. I KNEW that Arden was going to die, I could feel it. I constantly kept my eyes on her when she was awake, as if that would stop a low blood glucose from surprising us. I taught myself how to stay alive without sleeping and at one point had myself convinced that I could tell if she was high or low by looking at her.

Today, I know how wrong I was. Today I can tell you with the utmost certainty that I should have kept moving forward. That all it took to not be mired down in the fear, was the guts to not be afraid and the sense to focus on living instead of not dying. 

“Don’t stop and don’t give up. Some days will bring the weight of the world to you—don’t stop. There will be times that those days turn into weeks—don’t give up. There is a wonderment of understanding on the other side of your struggle, and it’s worth getting to. These days and weeks that seem as though they exist only to torture you and the people that you love—they teach. The pain strengthens you and the dings in your soul aren’t as deteriorating as they initially seem. In the end, they are reshaping it, and it’s up to you to decide what shape it will take.”

- from Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal 

When I look back, it's unbelievable to me just how much fear was able to change who I was and how adamantly I was willing to defend my position. I really believed that diabetes was going to kill my daughter either today or in thirty years. Diabetes and fear had taken the place of reason. I had lost myself and the human desire to enjoy life to the diseases and in the process, forgotten why we had children. I was no longer a loving father who wanted to show his children the world, now I was but a well-meaning jailer trying to protect Arden against the one thing that none of us can guard against. 

One day I was lucky enough to fail at my job of never letting anything 'bad' happen to Arden and then the process of moving on was finally able to begin. 

I was saved by the very things that I was trying to avoid... they are my topics for the remainder of this week.

#DiabetesAndFear don't have to go together.

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Diabetes and Fear

Arden was diagnosed with type I diabetes on August 22, 2006 – just a few weeks after her second birthday. One year later, having never read a blog in my life, I began to write Arden's Day. My goal back then was to share with family and friends what living with type I was like so that they could hopefully understand our new life a bit better. 

Before long someone shared the site with a person outside of my circle and a month later I received my first email from a mother who lived in England – she was thanking me for sharing our life with type I diabetes and wanted me to know that my blog was helping her family.

It would be an understatement to say that I wasn't expecting that.

At the end of her note the woman offered me her support should I ever need it... that was my first interaction with someone in the diabetes community. That email reshaped my intention for this blog. I gave it a name, bought a url and set about sharing our days with the hope that our struggles may make yours a little easier. 

In honor of Arden's last eight years of living with type I diabetes, I will be dedicating all of next week to stories about diabetes fear – with the hope that our struggles may make yours a little easier.

Beginning on Monday I will post five blogs - one each day - about how I overcame the biggest problem that diabetes brought to my life. I'll talk about the specter that arrive at the moment Arden was diagnosis, tell you the stories of how we escaped it, muse a bit about life since I got rid of it. And talk about what to do if it should comes back.

Come back Monday and we'll talk about #DiabetesAndFear

JDRF Partner ViaCyte to Immediately Initiate Type 1 Diabetes Clinical Trial

From JDRF.org

JDRF’s partner ViaCyte recently announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing them to move forward with a clinical trial of its innovative type 1 diabetes (T1D) encapsulated cell replacement therapy called VC-01™ product candidate. The company plans to immediately initiate the first ever clinical evaluation of a stem cell-derived islet replacement therapy for the treatment of people with T1D. The trial will enroll approximately 40 people at multiple clinical sites.

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Trials on people, not mice.

read the entire article on JDRF.org

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Vote for Sierra Sandison so she can #ShowMeYourPump on Television

People's Choice: Miss America

There will only be 15 contestants featured on television during the Miss America pageant next month and WE have the ability to vote for one of them... 

It takes less than 5 seconds to vote: Let's use those five seconds to propel Sierra Sandison, our favorite insulin pump wearing pageant contestant, into the top 15!

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VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!

Just click on this link and check the only option you will see (it says, "Click here to vote for Miss Idaho 2014 Sierra Sandison), then press the "Finish Survey" button and you are done, it's that easy. Voting ends on September 12th.

Let's all help Sierra take #ShowMeYourPump from the Internet to your television and give her the chance to tell the world what that thing on her hip does.

After you finish please share the People's Choice news with your friends any way that you can. Use my social media share button below, write a note on your favorite social media platform and include this link - http://bit.ly/SS-AD - or shout from the highest mountain!

#DOC 

#ShowMeYourPump