Tomorrow is Endocrinologist day.
Normally for a diabetic or a parent of a diabetic this is a day that you dread, for multiple reasons.
You get your dreaded A1C result, which essentially is a report card of how well you have been managing your or your child's diabetes the last 3 months. It tells the doctor your average blood sugar level for that period of time. The result is given in number form ranging from 5-12. The lower the number the better control that you have over your blood sugar. Recently the American Diabetes Association has lowered the target A1C level for a child to 7.5 or below! This is a number that we haven't seen since going on the pump however, we drastically improved at our last appointment and are working hard to achieve that number again! The pump just has a very difficult learning curve that comes along with it because of the multiple components that can be altered to gain better results. Learning which to change, and how to change them is overwhelming but we are doing our best!
You have to answer the What's and Why's about your management.
We are blessed to have an AMAZING Pediatric Endocrinologist. I actually look forward to the appointments so that I can pick his brain about what we need to do better and how we can improve our management skills. He is always so supportive and I usually leave his office feeling better and more confident than when I went in. We keep a list of questions that we want to ask and I always have my trusty binder with all of our reports, logs and past results. I know that we have a long road to go and I know that with the Endocrinologist that we have, that we will continue to learn and grow in a healthy way.
Not only do we visit the Endocrinologist, but he also has built a team that we meet with separate from his appointment every 3 months as well. This team consists of a Registered Nurse, a Certified Diabetes Educator, a Nutritionist, and a Social Worker. You are able to meet with all them or just the people that you are needing to further your education and management skills. We still choose to go every 3 months and we typically just meet with the CDE (who just happens to be a T1) and she will also help us tweak and modify settings and answer any other questions that we may have.
Today I am nervous, nervous to see what his A1C will come back at and nervous that we aren't doing a good enough job. It is a lot of pressure (mostly self inflicted) JP's future health is riding on us taking good care of him. I want him to be as healthy as a NON Diabetic child. I don't want him to have any lingering health problems because we were unable to properly manage his blood sugar levels. However with that, I also just want him to be a kid and enjoy kid things and life. The balancing act is excruciating, but necessary. The way that we approach his care, is the way that he will eventually care for himself. I just want to make sure that we are teaching him that his health is important, but living his life is also equally as important!
I will give an update tomorrow with how the appointment went and where our management is headed from here!
-Until next time
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