Those first few weeks were hectic, yet glorious. I remember my daughter dropping her A1C back to the 7 range in a few short weeks! SEVEN! Can you even imagine? Well, if you are like me then… no. Bum bum bum. Sad face. How did we even get here? What happened? I mean, one day we were cruising along, taking shots at every meal, doing finger sticks to check blood sugar levels, its all good. Honeymooning, yes, but still we were doing all the steps, just with a lot less insulin than we are using these days. There was just something so simple about only knowing blood sugar levels 4 or 5 times a day. I guess that’s not good enough in today’s world of diabetes, so we were introduced to the newest stuff, the latest and greatest tech.
It started with the Dexcom G4. (Many of you will never know the glorious time when you could fire off a two inch needle and then see how fast you could pull the plunger back out – whew those were good times) The G4 was a little special in that you could restart that sensor for a year if the thing stayed on. And boy did we try. HOWEVER. It had to be calibrated a couple times a day, and that calibration could be faked.
Now I don’t know about anyone else’s kid, but my child is an expert at stretching the truth with a straight face. Did you calibrate? Yes I did it. In the beginning that’s all I needed to hear. Until that fateful day in the doctor’s office when the A1C shot up to 9. Wait. What? Where the hell did that come from? We have tech. She’s using it, right? Wrong. Little miss perfect nurse explained to us in a matter-of-fact, you should know better, why aren’t you watching your child and being a better parent, tone. “See here? Those numbers aren’t real”. Well, damn. Fool me once… Fool me a thousand more times as this story unfolds. Because apparently I’m a trusting idiot and my daughter enjoys the slow torture of her mother.
Anyway, as we adjust to using this tech, it doesn’t take long before we had come to rely on it for numbers. The routine habit of testing went out the window. My daughter realized pretty quick that she didn’t have to stop what she was doing to calibrate. She once told us she “knew” her numbers based on how she felt and that’s what she entered. Laughable! This little 13 year old thought she could accurately guess blood sugar numbers! In the meantime, those good habits were eroding fast. I mean, she knew what life was like without diabetes (she was diagnosed at 12). She wanted to get back there and the fastest way was simply to ignore the highs, and keep mom and dad happy by entering false numbers.
So, after another round of high A1C’s, the answer isn’t to get rid of the tech. No, no. Nobody profits when that happens. The answer, it seems, is to add even more tech. In comes the pumping. Now, my child learned that not only could she fake her blood sugars, she could also fake TAKING INSULIN. WTF. Yep, in this game of hers, she got to see how far she could push things before anyone noticed. Guess who noticed? You got it. Little miss perfect nurse. Right on queue. Loads of excuses were now available to my daughter – and wow did she use them. The CGM quit working and I couldn’t find my meter. I left the pump in the other room. Oh the possibilities were endless. One thing was clear, according to the nurse we weren’t as “involved” as we needed to be. Well I’ll be damned. Isn’t that why we paid for the tech?