Food is medicine

It was very fortunate for us that school vacation (Up here, in the Great White North, the land of snow and ice, we actually have a one week vacation in February, and another in April.) had started the evening we returned to our house. The dog was safely at the sitters, and we unloaded our new life gear onto the dining room table. We all flopped into bed, exhausted.

Packing light is now a thing of the past.

There was no rest for the weary. Not even the weary who had spent a restless two nights at a hospital. There was blood sugar to be checked at 2:00 am.

We were reassured at the hospital that the need for such checks would not last forever. I was pleased to hear this, because neither of my kids slept through the night until they were five years old. And they were five years apart. That's right: I had suffered ten straight years of no more than four consecutive hours of sleep. Even though I had been allowed to sleep through the night for the past six years, I had not yet stopped appreciating it. I was reassured that unless it was over 250, I need not worry too much. It would take a while for her body to adapt.

Of course, these days, if her bg is over 250, we are on it like white on rice.

Perhaps, considering the number of carbs in rice, this was not the best choice of a metaphor.

Her middle of the night bg was acceptable,  and we had the pleasure of waking M in the morning for her 25-30 carbs of breakfast. We didn't know how many carbs were in the food we had in the house, so we consulted The Calorie King. 

The Calorie King is a fabulous manual that families dealing with diabetes can use to calculate carbs of typical foods, as well as grams of fat and calories. We opened this book more often than the phone book, the Bible, or the newspaper. We were pretty well told that we needed to buy it. Best. Investment. Ever.

The first few weeks were spent looking up food and remarking on the number of carbs in each. This is especially fun when you choose fast food or brand names that you suspect are bad for you. As in, "Holy crap, did you realize that a chocolate chip muffin has 87 carbs?"

"Let me see that a minute.... Look here; a cheese omelet only has has 2.5 carbs!"

"No way. Let me see that. Whoa! A medium caramel malt from Dairy Queen has 163 carbs! What do you think is the most carb filled thing in here?"

"I think it's the whole bloomin' onion: 185 carbs."

"Wow!'

And so on.

Right now we were trying to figure out how to get M the amount of food she needed to fill herself up, but still keep her meal under 30 carbs. The bread we regularly bought was 28 carbs per slice. That didn't leave a lot of wiggle room. Eggs were 1 carb. We cooked 2 eggs, bacon (0 carbs) and one slice of toast. We realized we would have to invest in sugar free jello, and fast. Jello was "free". M could eat as much sugar free Jello as she wished. Seeing as she needed to gain back 20 pounds, we needed to keep her fed. We would need to buy lower carb bread.

I gave M her morning shot. In this rigid program we selected, there were two kinds of insulin: Humalog and NPH. NPH was the medium-acting insulin. It is what they call "cloudy" insulin. We needed to gently roll it between our palms to mix it. Then we needed to draw air into the syringe that was equal to the amount of the insulin we needed to withdraw from the vial. This was to pressurize the vial. Then we drew the insulin into the syringe and injected it into the subject: aka M.

In the morning, we actually mixed insulins to minimize the number of injections to which M would have to be subjected. The process went like this: roll NPH, swab both vials with alcohol, pressurize both vials. Now draw in Humalog, then draw in NPH. Inject.

Humalog is a fast-acting insulin. We gave it to M three times per day. The NPH was given twice. Because we mixed it with the humalog once each morning, M was given a grand total of 4 injections per day. Somehow, that seemed bearable. Since she was eating 6 times per day, the flexible plan would create a situation in which M would get at least 6 injections per day. That sounded like a lot.

We continued to look through the Calorie King. We tried to put together a grocery list based on foods that were lower in carbs. M likes fruit. What kind of fruit is low in carbs? Blueberries, cantaloupe, strawberries. Not exactly in season here in New England.

In the spirit of charting new territories, M and I hit the grocery store in search of high protein, high fat, low carb foods.

After 2 full hours of thoroughly searching grocery isles, checking labels, and finding new products that M wanted to try, we spent just over $300. For comparison, you should know that our family normally spent in the neighborhood of $120 a week. I took a deep breath and paid at the register. I told myself that it didn't matter what it took, that we were going to keep M healthy. I tried not to think about the long-term consequences of doubling our food bill over time.

I feel like I must tell you that, now - since we have figured things out- we spend about $140 per week on groceries. Nearly all of those "diabetic" products on the grocery shelves and the foods she ate in the hospital were expensive and unnecessary to M's health.

We'll talk more about that later.

Ironically, we ended up buying candy and soda. We never kept candy in the house before, but sometimes we were just a carb or two off from M's desired range. Hershey Kissess had about 2 carbs each. The soda was in case M had a low bg reading. Those mini cans of Coke would be just the thing to bring her back up again. We rarely had soda in the house either. Now we always have tiny cans of Coke, even though her "quick acting carb" of choice is currently Smarties.

Time to feed M her snack. She would have to eat every three hours. What could she eat for 20-25 carbs? 2 Tablespoons peanut butter on celery (8 carbs) , two cheese sticks, (6 carbs), a hard-boiled egg (0 carbs) and 2 Hershey Kissess (5 carbs).

The schedule of 4 shots and six eating times was exhausting. It seemed like we were always in the process of doing something to manage M's diabetes. All day. Night offered only a four hour reprieve.

We all agreed that we were looking forward to the time when all of the work, scheduling, calculating and planning would be like second nature. We had been promised by nearly everyone at the hospital that it would. Fortunately, we had a week before M had to go to school. We would have time to at least better orient ourselves before attempting to get back to "normal."