Frustrations

I was going to post this on FB, and actually I did.....for about 4 minutes.  I deleted it, because I'm always afraid that I post too much about diabetes.  I don't want other people to grow tired of hearing our struggles/triumphs.  So, I thought I'd post about it here.  This is my private blog.  People only see it if they choose too, unlike FB where it pops up on their screen whether they like it or not.  Here is what I posted:

Prepare for a lengthy rant here....We got a letter today from our insurance company, letting us know that they will no longer cover the cost of Noah's Novolog (insulin). They want us to go on a different insulin instead. My problem with this is, and trust me, it's been building up for nearly 3 yrs now, our choices in how we treat are son keep getting taken away from us. The insurance company dictates what they will cover for his care. When it was time for a pump, they refused to cover anything but the one we have. They've told us how much insulin we're allowed to have and the frequency in which we get it - and this includes supplies for his treatment as well. This isn't something we take for free. We pay for our insurance, every single month, and yet we aren't given choices in his treatment. This isn't an unnecessary drug. This is a LIFE-SAVING drug. These are LIFE-SAVING instruments for him. Without these things, he would lose his life. Why aren't we given the choice on the things we need to treat him?! I'm sure this switch to Humalog will be fine, but it's just one more example, to me, of how the insurance company makes the decisions and not us. I don't want to offend anyone with this rant. This is just coming from a mom that deals with her son's health every single day - every single meal - during every activity, bedtime, and sickness - and, I get weary of constant change and roadblocks in this journey.


The reason that a small change like this upsets me has everything to do with choice and stability.  With diabetes there is no stability.  I can't remember a day that was perfect.  A day when no adjustments had to be made.  Diabetes is all about change.  It's about making adjustments all the time, due to activity, sickness, meals, etc...  It was nice to have a constant in our insulin.  It was nice to know that Novolog was our choice and our drug.  But, no.  Now that's changing too and not because that's what WE want.  It's another thing that is taken out of our hands.  I am a Type A personality.  I like being in control.  And, with Type 1, there is no control.  In fact, diabetes likes to remind you that IT is in control and you're just there to manage it.  That sucks!!  So, not only do I not have control of this disease, I have no real control of its care.  My choices are made for me and that is why I got so angry at today's letter.

I decided to take this off my FB wall, so that only those of you who read my blog and want to read my rant can.  If you choose not too, that's ok too.  I consider this blog a diary of sorts.  I post about every day things and sometimes very personal struggles.  It's cathartic for me to put it down on paper, so to speak. If writing it down and letting it out will help my spirits rebound and get back on track in this fight (and, yes, sometimes that's exactly what it is - a fight!), then that's what I'll do.

Happy Halloween

Well, yesterday was Halloweeen - a jam-packed day of busyness.  It was a fun day, just rainy and crumby out, so it wasn't as awesome as it's been in previous years and, I think I can admit this, as my kids get older, my excitement about Halloween is waning.  Be that as it may, the kids were almost as excited yesterday morning as they are on Christmas morning!  Guess the promise of candy will do that to a kid.

Noah had basketball practice, so he wasn't home for the group picture I took before I took the kids to school, but the other 4 sillyheads were and they couldn't wait for the day to start!

That morning I had preschool with our 3s and we got to have our Halloween Parade - indoors, of course, because of that blasted rain!  Mrs. Johnson, my lead, was a parrot to my pirate. :-)

How cute are those kids, by the way?  So, so cute!  Again, I have the best job!

After preschool was done, I headed home just long enough to stuff myself with lunch and head out the door for the class parties.  I helped in Noah's classroom.  He and his friend Nick were cracking me up in this picture.  Just peeking over the bookcase in this one. :-)

Noah was a stick figure and posed with his friends, Jonathan, Nick and Keeden.   What fun kids!

This was perhaps the best class party I've ever been to in all my years of class parties.  They played "Minute to Win It" games and had the best time!  Here they had to suck on a straw and lift M&Ms, one at a time, into the next cup.

This one was my favorite, because watching them try and move an oreo down their face and catch it in their mouth, without using hands, was hilarious!  Only one girl actually did it.  There was about 10 games to play and the kids had so much fun!

I headed down to Livie's classroom around 2:30 to see what she was up to.  They were in the process of wrapping up their friends like mummies.  Cute!

Livie was Darth Vadar in a man-tu, not to be confused with a tutu, which she tells me is only for girls.  A "Mantu" is for boys.

I love getting pictures of the kids with their friends, so I had Livie grab her friend Julianna and get their picture taken. :-)

The rain, miraculously, went away just in time for trick-or-treating.  So, we quickly got ready and got out candy on!

Once again we ran into some friends.  These are the boys I babysit (the ones in the first picture).  They looked awesome!

Later we ran into the other boys I babysit, our friends James' and Donna's boys.  We ended up going home after we went around the block and loaded up into the van to hit other houses, because the rain started coming back.  We had James and the boys join us, while Pete passed out candy at our house and Donna at theirs.

We went to several houses together, before ending our night at the "Grim Reaper" house, as Livie put it.  The kids pass this house every day on the way to school and just HAD to go here!  It was so much fun too!  The guy on the left, dressed up like Jason, had a real chainsaw (without the chain) and revved it up and chased the kids.  It was awesome!  The kids got a huge kick out of it!

Livie and Noah wanted a picture by the giant, inflatable grim reaper.

Madie wanted one by the werewolf, while Tobias shot it. ;-)

When they got home, they dumped out all of their candy, picked out their favorite pieces, put them into labeled bags, and sent the rest with Pete to work this morning.  Yet another fun Halloween for these kiddos!

Basement Rearrange/Redo

I would love and I mean LOVE to finish our basement.  Get drywall up and real carpeting, but let's be serious here.  Unless we win the lottery, that's just not going to happen.  But, it's such a big space, so we've been using in a myriad of ways over the years.  It seems we've done a few of these rearranges over the course of the past 10 yrs, but this one is my absolute favorite so far!  

This space has held this ping-pong table since, probably, 2004 aka FOREVER!  It's a fun thing to have, and I definitely don't regret getting it, but in recent years, it's taken up this big space and become something the kids rollerskate around and pile things on.  So, we folded it up, pushed it against the wall and filled it up with something else....

It now holds a bedroom and my desk. :-)  There is even a recliner, so if dad comes to spend the night, he can sleep down here - either on the bed or the recliner - and have this big space all to himself.  We even moved the craft table from over by the furnace and put it here, closer to my desk area/teaching supplies.  We had this basement broken down into sections.  There was a "girls section" with all the girly toys and dolls and stuff.  We had a "boys section" that held, obviously, all the boys toys.  Then a preschool section that was behind our living area with our tv and couches and stuff.  The entertainment center that our tv was on was moved (and boy was it heavy!!!) and it now holds board games and my teaching supplies.  It's right there next to my desk.

You can see the "preschool section behind the loveseat on the right.

The boys section was by our air hockey table.  These "before"pictures are from 2010 and there were a few adjustments made since these pictures were taken, but it's a pretty accurate "before" pic.  

Anyway, this is the "after" taken from our new bedroom area.  It's all open now.  The couches have been moved and the space has been carpeted and the preschool shelves are over by the furnace and new loveseat location now.  The kids are LOVING this space, because they can rollerskate all over the place now. :-)

This section used to be where we had the girls stuff.  The bookshelf is a reminder of that.  We are planning on getting a new larger tv to put upstairs and will move our 50" flat screen down here.  That's kind of what caused all of this to happen.  We didn't want the tv to be out in the open like the other one was.  The kids (and their friends) can be a bit wild at times down there and we didn't want the tv to suffer the consequences of that craziness.  So we moved the entire girls section to the old living/tv area and put the living area where the girls stuff was, so the tv would out of the range of those nutball kids. :-)

This gives you a better look at the new rugs and openness we have now.

The dress-up clothes and girls stuff is where the entertainment center used to be.  It all fit perfectly on that wall!

And, this is another view of our living area.  The Wii is down here now and the bookcase is now full of sock monkeys.  Noah finally has a place to put them all!  We love the new space and have spent a lot of time down there enjoying it already.  We still have a bit more sorting to do, but it's nearly done and we're all so excited about our new, open space!

Open House

As many of you know, I'm a preschool teacher.  I am the teacher for our 2 yr old parent/child program and the asst teacher for our 3s class.  I absolutely LOVE it and I feel more than blessed that I was given this job after 10 yrs as a stay-at-home mom.  This past Monday was our all-school Open House.  The first time we've ever had it for all the classes at once and it was a lot of fun!

Because I have parents and caregivers in with our students, it's hard to come up with anything new that they haven't already seen their child make.  So, I decided to take their projects and make it into a mural.  I got lots of compliments on it too!  I added the leaves they painted a few weeks ago to the tree and added their farm animals (the Open House was farm-themed) and their pumpkins as well.

By their pumpkins, I took their pictures and made them into scarecrows. :-)

By their farm animals, I added a picture of them working with their parent/caregiver next to their project.

Our 2s room was all decorated with more projects that they made, from spiders and spider webs to more leaves.

Down in our 3s classroom, my lead teacher (also named Lori!) got the room all ready to go for both our 3s and her 4s.  Those pumpkins on the table and on the wall were made by our 3s.  Cute, aren't they?!

She had lots of pictures hanging up as well.

And, several projects hanging up in the hallway.  Each family was given a list of the projects to look for from their class.  It was like a scavenger hunt and they all had fun looking for their child's artwork/pictures.

Because I work with both the 2s and the 3s, I had to run up and down the stairs a lot to try and make sure I saw all of the kids.  It was a lot of running, but it was fun, because not only did I see our 2s and 3s, but I got to see some of my former 2s that are now in the 4s class.  It's so much fun to see how much they grow each time I see them. :-)  Plus, I get to talk to the parents, who we also grow close to during our year together in class.  I love building those relationships.

Only about half of our 2s came, so our classroom wasn't very busy, but it was fun to see the dads (who usually aren't able to come to class) and the siblings come and see what the room is all about and all the fun artwork that they've done.

The 3s and 4s had special homework assignments for our Open House.  They were supposed to make recycled farm animals.  Here is some of what our 3s made.  So cute!!

After everyone went home, someone took a picture of all of our teachers.  This is such a great group of women!  I'm so proud to be among them.  Lori, my 3s lead, is in the front row on the left.  My 2s asst is Katie and she's in the middle in the front.  They're all fabulous!

I stole this from Facebook.  One of the parents of this adorable little gal took a picture of us with her.  Now you can see why I love my job so much!  I get to spend my time with sweet kids like this!!  It was a really fun evening with our preschool family and I'm glad that I got to be a part of it. :-)

It's THE Day!!!!!

Remember me mentioning a couple weeks ago that it was "the day", but not "THE day"?  Well, today, folks, it is "THE day"!!!  Noah is shot-free and hooked up to a pump full of insulin!

We had to be in Peoria by 9am, so I wasn't able to babysit the neighbor boys this morning and ended up dropping Livie off at another neighbor's house by 7am, so we could leave.  Thank goodness Madie had cheerleading, so I didn't need to find her a place to stay until school started.  We had to go through 3 hours of discussions and explanations and all that, so we could make sure we were ready to switch over.  They looked at our downloads and food journals and gave us the thumbs up!  Here, Noah is getting his pump ready with all of his ratios.

He did a great job with the site change today, even though he said it hurt.  We bought him that little Spongebob as a "Great job!" present.  He liked that a lot. :-)

By the time we finished up at the hospital, it was time for lunch.  We let him pick where he wanted to go and, of course, he chose McDonalds.  It was so weird NOT giving him a shot!  I kept thinking I was forgetting something.  Then I thought, "Oh no!  I forgot to give you a correction dose!".  Then I realized that the pump did all that for me.  I didn't have to do the math myself!  I can't tell you how awesome that was.  For once, we didn't have to calculate anything.  We didn't have to get a shot ready and try and hide it as we gave it to him (so we didn't offend any of the other people eating there).  It was simply just a couple pushes of a button.  It was so awesome!

Now we go through another 3 weeks of homework.  This homework is all about trying to get his ratios right.  Because the pump delivers insulin differently than the shots did, we have to figure out what numbers work for him.  How to deliver the basal best, since he varies throughout the day.  Things like that.  So, once again I am keeping detailed food charts and will have to download his meter (which connects remotely to his pump), so all of his information is on the Medtronic website. We also have to do checks more often and specifically test him at midnight, 3am, and 6am, so they can see how the basal insulin is affecting him throughout the night.  Then, each day I will call PDRC and tell them his numbers, so they can make adjustments.  They said it takes about a week to really get the numbers in place.  And, as we all know, with juvenile diabetes, numbers never last long, so I'm sure there will be many phone calls to come in the coming weeks/months.  But, we've started and I am thrilled to pieces for him!!  We have some sleepless nights ahead, but it will be so worth it to get rid of those 4-6 shots a day, to just the one injection site every 2 days. :-)  It's a brand new adventure!

LOL4JC Community Meal

Today was the first official day of youth group for our kiddos.  Last month, you may remember, we had the kick-off event at Grand Bear Lodge.  It was a really fun time for everyone and I was anxious to see what the first follow-up meeting would be like.  For their first meeting, they were also slated to host the community meal.  The community meal is something our church does the third Sunday of every month to feed the homeless and others in our community in need.  Because LOL4JC (our youth group) meets on the third Sunday of the month, Melissa (the youth director/leader) thought it would be fun for the kids to host that in the morning and meet in the evening for their first group.  I thought it was a brilliant idea too!

Unfortunately, Melissa wasn't able to make it, because her dad wasn't expected to live through the weekend.  So, I quickly took over the community meal, while the other three leaders took over the meeting tonight.  Thankfully, Melissa and I had talked about the menu the Sunday before, so I had some idea of what she was going to do, so I could try and do some of the same things.  The menu was sloppy joes, mummy pizzas, veggies, orange applesauce, witches' brew chips, and cake/pudding.  Melissa's mom made up the sloppy joes for us, but I quickly realized there wasn't going to be enough to serve the community AND us, so I made the executive decision (with my friend Donna's blessing and financial help) to make a pizza run.... during church.  The kids talked to their parents and got the ok to do that, so we worked a bit in the kitchen to get things set up (since I was busy teaching them during SS the hour before), then we walked down to Papa Johns and hooked ourselves us with a few pizzas and breadsticks, but not before taking a selfie! :-)

When we got back, all the rest of the kids and adult helpers came down, joined us in eating the yummy pizzas, then got to work!  Everyone put their hands in something, whether it was making the mummy pizzas or getting the applesauce dyed orange.  They all worked hard and did a GREAT job!

Did I mention that our meal was Halloween-themed?  They all got to dress up, if they wanted too.  Noah wore his banana costume from last year and it was hilarious!

My friend, Julie, took this picture of our crew.

She also took THIS picture, which cracked me up!!  Her son Nick is the one trying to eat Noah the Banana!

We had a huge crowd today!  The other times I've been there, we've served maybe 30 people.  Today, it was nearly double that.  We totally ran out of buns for the sloppy joes and had to send Ron out on a bun run to keep up with the demand!

I was proud of all the hard work my kids put in today.  Their costumes were a hit as was mine. :-)  And, might I mention the compliments I got for my stunning moustache and goatee?

Of course, during the down time, Noah quickly went to work on his ipod. ;-)  The evening meeting was a lot of fun for them too.  I didn't go to this, but heard all about it on the way home.  Madie invited a couple friends to go, so there were only 5 kids total, but they and the three leaders turned off all the lights in the church and played hide-and-seek sardines.  They had the best time and can't wait until the next meeting next month!

Livie was sick with the croup, so that's why you don't see her or Pete in any of the pics.  Pete was ready to go help me get the community meal going, but plans change when kids are sick.  So they spent a busy day at home working in our basement.  Well, Pete was busy.  Livie rested.

It was a fun-filled, jam-packed day and I am so stinkin' tired now, but so glad we were able to have such a great time doing lots of great things!