A+ for effort

One nice thing about my mom watching Mark is that she's become quite the diabetes expert. She's an awesome carb counter, can recognize and treat lows, and is even a little competitive when it comes to his blood sugar numbers vs. hers. Other than changing his infusion sets, there aren't a whole lot of situations she can't handle.

But yesterday she took on the trickiest situation of all -- a trip to the beach. It's tricky for a number of reasons: Mark disconnects his pump because all the swimming sends him low; sand and sea pose a HUGE threat to the pump (damage or loss); the sun ruins the insulin if the pump's not properly stored; Mark tends to lose his site at the beach, which means he can't re-connect the pump. Basically, the number of things that could go wrong triples at the beach.

But that didn't stop my mom and brother Smed. They piled everyone into the car and headed off to the beach. I gave my mom a detailed list of procedures on when to bolus and when to disconnect/reconnect the pump. I warned her to put the little cap in the infusion site when she removed the pump, as it's just big enough for a few grains of sand. We both felt pretty confident.

Right up until lunch...when Mom and Smed couldn't remove the cap from his site. They'd done everything right, but some sand was trapped in the site, and prevented them from removing the cap to plug in the pump.

I told them to pour a little water into the site, and keep jiggling the cap (yes, diabetes has a lot of high-tech solutions). They did, and worked on it for about 40 minutes, with no luck. I could tell they were becoming worried and frustrated, and I kicked myself for sending them on the toughest field trip possible. (This is why I stress when Mark goes to the beach with his camp!)

I also kicked myself because no one else knows how to change Mark's set. I hate to burden anyone else with these tasks (it's easy to do, but has a lot of steps), so I just do it myself. But I've realized that's actually shortchanging my mom, who's always nervous about sites falling off, and not being able to replace them. It's also shortchanging Mark, who's dependent on me being around to change it.

So I went home at lunch to change the set. I walked my mom through the process, and she followed along really well. She's still nervous, but a little less so. I told her if his site falls off, to just replace that part, which is pretty easy -- not to worry about changing the insulin cartridge or messing with the pump. She breathed a lot easier hearing that.

She is definitely not one to shy away from a challenge. In fact, she's already planning their next beach outing -- tomorrow!

I'm so proud of her, and of my brother. Most people would just say, "Well, I'm not going to the beach again!" But instead of freaking out, they simply changed the game plan -- tomorrow, they'll take extra sets, needles, and a bottle of insulin, so that if they can't get the pump re-connected, they can still give Mark insulin. They will not let diabetes ruin their good time at the beach.

So when I say I have the best family ever...this is why! :-)