Category: healthy

Dear teacher

  
Parent teacher interviews last night. Great to hear that these teacher’s know my boy. I know that our diabetes educator is going to do a talk to the staff soon. Last week we had a near miss and the lack of awareness could have come at a huge cost to my son’s health. 

It has all been a reminder to us of how vulnerable we are when we send our children off. We hope that the teachers remember who our children are and what they need to do for them: it’s usually nothing but when things go wrong we need them to have a minimum amount of knowledge. I thought I’d been proactive but that was not the case.

I know this job. I’m a teacher too. This makes it even harder as I know what a tough gig teaching can be. I feel conflicted but making sure my boy is safe is my priority.

I wrote this poem at the start of this year when my son returned to school after the holidays. All my nieces and nephews in the Northern Hemisphere head back to school soon as we edge closer to our Australian summer. This is what I’d really like to say to the teachers.

 

I sip my cup of tea

  

I think that since my son’s diagnosis, I am a much stronger person. I’m a teacher. My job requires lots of energy and I deal with people all day, every day. I can fix things there.  Nothing phases me now. Solutions are found. I’m quicker at getting things done and better at connecting with people and understanding how to help them. Nothing at work is as hard as being the mum of a child with Type 1 diabetes.

I do not allow this to define me. I am so much more than this and yet…. when I sit with my colleagues for a cup of tea, I realise how different I am now.

I sip my cup of tea. I wonder how my son’s BGL is. I’m hoping that my boy will let me know if he goes above 15mmol on the way to school like he did the other day.  My friend talks about her toddler’s worrying cough.

I sip my cup of tea. I’m hoping the sport he has later in the morning doesn’t give him a hypo and that if it does, he’ll be brave enough to check his levels. Predictions can never be made as each day is so different from the last.  My friends discuss how untidy their children are.

I sip my cup of tea. I want to be like them.

I wash my cup and put it back in the cupboard ready for next time. I am a stronger person and the coughs and untidy rooms are part of the jigsaw of my world too but they are really small pieces in the puzzle of my life.

Carb Counting Queen

  When my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, one of the hardest things was learning to count carbs. It took me by surprise the places where carbs could be found and sometimes where I thought they would be, magically there were none. Who would have thought that a small apple, a slice of bread and a Cadbury’s Flake all had the same carb value?  I know they are not as healthy as each other but a really healthy dinner can be offset with a nice bit of chocolate at the end! It works for us anyway!

I was determined to keep the family meals as close to normal as possible although it did often feel like this cartoon when it came to working out the combined carbs of the 7 ingredients in the meal divided by the number of people eating it.

I wrote this poem after a couple of crazy weeks when I was thrown in the deep end. Sometimes you just have to laugh!