Holidays

When M was diagnosed, it was shortly after Easter. She was eleven years old. She had had a rough few weeks. Easter came along, and she could wear a skinny little dress like she never could before. She looked waifish. She hunted for treasures that the Easter Bunny left at her grandparents' house, and had a great time.

The day after Easter, she felt terrible. She had been feeling terrible off and on for many days, but this time I assumed that it was because she had eaten too much candy. She hadn't. That ear-less chocolate bunny stayed on her nightstand for days.

Well, it turned out that she felt lousy because she had type one diabetes.

Our first diabetic Halloween was last year. When we went to the Diabetes Nurse Educator, she gave us an orange sheet with a list of "fun sized" candy bars and their carb values. She advised M not to have too many pieces at a time, but pretty much gave us free reign over when and where she could eat these.

Before diabetes, I never really thought about why the FDA made companies write "Not labeled for individual retail sale" on their wrappers. Now it makes perfect sense. How can anyone choose what to eat if they don't know what is in it? Now I know that each piece of Halloween candy has about 7-10 carbs in it.

That's a lot. I mean, M sometimes has a whole meal that totals 30 carbs. That's just three of those candy bars. Yuck.

Carbs seem to be pretty central to American holiday celebrations. I never really thought about that before. Mashed potatoes. Candy. Nuts. Stuffing. Cookies. Pie. Candies yams. All carbs.

All of us think of the holidays as the time when we gain weight, drink too much, and generally make unhealthy choices. For a normal person it means indigestion, gas, and bathroom discomforts. For a diabetic it can mean another step toward blindness, foot problems, or renal failure. Fun.

As a mother of a young diabetic, it is interesting to balance the two realities:

1) She must have fun

2) She must balance her food desires with her food needs.

I can only hope that the lessons that she learns from her parents and diabetes team will help her make better choices during her holidays for years to come.

Or maybe I will just need to eat all of her Halloween candy for the rest of my life. I would be willing to take the indigestion bullet for her. What mother wouldn't do that for her child?

Urp.