What not to do! The Opposite of Tricks and Tips- Diabetes Blog Week

Tips and Tricks – Friday 5/20 Let’s round out the week by sharing our best diabetes tips and diabetes tricks.  

When I saw what we were to blog about today my heart sank! I make mistakes all the time so from my now quite considerable experience, I can certainly pass on some advice to mothers of children with diabetes: what not to do!

Night time blood testing: 

These have all been tried and tested on my poor child. Do not:

1. Try to use your phone as a torch by holding it between your teeth whilst simultaneously doing a finger prick. The angle at which you have to hold your head in order to shine the torch on the sleeping child’s hand means that your head is so far back that the hand is no longer in your field of vision.
2. Use a camping torch on your head. Yes, it certainly does free up your hands but the look of terror on your child’s face when they wake due to the intense light in their eyes, is one you will not forget in a hurry.
3. Choose the wrong child when entering a dark tent in the middle of the night to do a blood glucose check. Nuff said there!
4. Take offence if your sleepy child chooses their middle finger for their blood test and even if they stick it up in a way that in other circumstances would get them in trouble , let it go! They have to get their revenge sometimes!
5. Forget to wear your glasses. Leave them next to your bed so that you put them on as soon as your alarm goes off. If you need to make corrections to high levels, 5% can look very like 10% when you are flying blind.

Accessories. You will not need :

1. A small handbag! Even if it’s cute, in a sale and made from Italian leather , you will not be able to use it and it will mock you from the depths of your wardrobe.
2. Jelly beans in your bag when you are premenstrual! You know they are for your child’s possible hypos but your desire to eat them will be so strong that you will not be able to resist. You will feel guilty for the rest of the day. Stick an extra popper in your bag instead!
3. Cheap make up! Invest in some good quality makeup. You know you deserve it! It covers up the bags under your eyes from the night time checks and stops people asking if you’re feeling sick! I’ve had to tell my mother in law to stop asking me if I feel sick when she pops into the house on a Sunday morning. This is what I look like without makeup , do not try to rub away invisible stains under my eyes (true story, I swear!). This is what your son wakes up to every morning so deal with it woman! ( I do love her, just not when she licks her finger and attacks my face to remove stains that are just under eye shadows from lack of sleep!)

Cooking and food. You must never:

1. Forget the maths you learnt at school. You forgotten it already? You poor sod! Relearn it pronto!
2. Lose your calm whilst making calculations under extreme pressure- it reminds me of my brother’s paramedic training where he was forced to drive at high speed whilst answering complex medical questions. The more likely scenario for us will be a starving child and buffet type meal. You may develop a muscle twitch in your eye when computing the carbs. Be careful who you look at at this point as you may receive some unwanted advances from the strange little man at the end of the buffet who thinks you are winking at him! Read this poem about being a carb counting queen.
3. Try to pretend a cauliflower sauce is carbonara. If you are going to tell lies about food, it must taste nice! Chocolate mousse made from avocado, maple syrup, cream and cacao is a rare exception!
4. Give up! Trying to learn to count carbs when starting from scratch is bloody hard. Healthy, home made food is a great goal to have but dialling a pizza now and then makes life feel normal!

You! Do not:

1. Forget about yourself. In the six months following diagnosis, I did not go out for fun. What if something happened to my child when I wasn’t there? Nothing bad happened and I was there so, slowly but surely, I let go. I do go out now and I’ve learnt to trust my son and those around him. My son also needs to see that him having diabetes does not prevent me from living my life. If I want him to live life to the full, don’t I need to do the same? Put your fears in a padded cell in your brain and deal with them when you feel up to it!
2. Drink four glasses of prosecco in quick succession then fall asleep in the corner thus missing out on the fun night you’d been looking forward to for weeks! 

I had such fun putting this list together, reliving some crazy moments from the last two years. If I look at the lists, and not the ‘do nots’ that come before them, these are all things I have done. We have survived and even had a few laughs along the way! Does anyone else have a list like this?