First big shot

While it has been over a year since we left the hospital armed with new information and knowledge regarding diabetes and how to manage it, I still remember preparing M to give herself a shot.

I remember thinking that when she went off to college, she had better have a roommate with diabetes, too. Who else could give her a shot in the butt?

When a person is diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes, there are factors to consider that may not have come up before.

1) You cannot give your insulin shots in the same place all of the time, no matter how inconvenient all other locations might be for you. It is necessary to "rotate" where you give insulin shots. If you give yourself shots in the same place repeatedly, you are likely to develop callouses, which in turn make the absorption of insulin more difficult.

2) The best places to give shots are in locations with fat on them: the back of the arm, the belly, the butt, the thigh, the back of the leg.... Of course, if you have recently been diagnosed with type one diabetes, there is no fat on your body anywhere.

Inject yourself where it's yellow. Good luck!

3) It is hard to give yourself a shot in the butt, the back of the arm, or the back of the leg. There are tricks, but you have to learn them at diabetes camp. At least it seems that way.

4) Giving yourself a shot for the first time is scary.

5) The needles for insulin are thin and short. You want the insulin to get into your fat layer for better absorption. To make sure that you get into the fat layer, you pinch a nice meaty part of your body, inject the insulin, release the pinch, then remove the needle.

6) Other shots do not require the pinch.

So we leave the hospital with the parental skills necessary for M to survive in our home. But M has not yet injected herself. Just as we were, she was nervous about possibly hurting herself while injecting the insulin.

Our goal is for her to inject herself at least once per day so that she may do it herself at school.

I encourage her. Cajole her. Point out that she keeps telling me that it doesn't hurt. Intellectually, we are on the same page. She KNOWS it doesn't hurt. It just freaks her out to think about doing it to herself.

This is understandable considering that she was unable to look at needles until she had to. Now she was fully invested in her new life of "needles, needles, needles, all the time". Life had changed, and it had only been a week. On the other hand, M would be returning to school very shortly. Time was running out.

Several meals in a row, M sat at the dinner table, with her needle poised, readying herself to inject insulin into her belly. She would pull the needle away to brace herself for jabbing it in there quickly. She would begin to "shoot" the needle, and stop mere centimeters away from the quivering flesh. She repeated this action, growing more frustrated each time.

Sometimes she would dissolve into tears. M knew she could do it, but she was scared. Every time she cried, a piece of me would cry with her. The part of me she could see, however,  would say, "Don't worry. When you're ready, you'll do it. It will be fine."

But I don't think she believed it.

Meals passed. Days passed.

I needed to go to the dump. I left the house for a few hours. When I returned, M gave me the big news: she had injected herself! She was so proud. So happy. So relieved.

"How did you do it?" I asked.

And the answer was, as it has been many times before, "Daddy made me do it."

I always wonder how Daddy does these things. What a miracle worker my beloved life partner is.

Relieved that I might no longer have to suffer watching my daughter bear the anxiety of self injection, I again said a prayer of thanks to the mating gods. Thank you, mating gods. Thank you.