Woman, Independent Parent, Artist, Advocate, Artifical Pancreas.... and EVERYTHING in between.

I am blessed to be parenting two beautiful girls, ages eight and eleven. My youngest nearly lost her life at age six (August 2010) to diabetic ketoacidosis: an often fatal consequences of undiagnosed type 1 diabetes. This is OUR journey: raw and sometimes, uncensored.

Thank you for visiting wishing good health and a cooperative pancreas to you and yours.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Princess Meets The Pump


Rowan finally decided the other week it was time to start insulin pumping.

She was hooked up yesterday morning and we went live with insulin immediately.

For sixteen months, insulin injections have been disruptive at the very least. She didn't like them, they stressed her out, they hurt (obviously) and she fought them. Every single one of them. Every one.

This morning was our first morning NOT doing a morning injection. The first time in sixteen months that I have not had to wrestle her to the ground and rape her with a syringe. My apologies for the use of the word rape, but the power of the word certainly expresses the level of angst and trauma, the inequity of power, the tragic dynamic there has existed with these injections.

A mother shouldn't have to have an experience like that with her child. Most certainly not on a DAILY basis, let alone potentially multiple times a day. It's heartbreaking. It sucks the life out of you. It exhausts you, and a thousand other effects both large and small. I am her Mama, a tender hearted soft place to fall, not the person bigger than you that keeps having to hold you down and inject you .

This is one of the happiest pictures I have seem of my sweet precious L'il Bones in years. In hindsight, I am confident that she was having issues with her pancreas long before her diagnosis 08/10. I stumbled onto a picture of her and her sister sitting on Santa's lap in 12/08, and there she was. A fraggle-haired little four year old, clutching a candy cane, staring out from behind the diabetic death mask.

I can't do anything about how long she struggled to be healthy without my knowledge, what I am choosing to focus on right now, from this minute forward, is to concentrate on helping to keep that happy smile on her face. I have heard that sometimes the moods and rages will balance somewhat with pumping. I have known a happier little girl in the last 30 hours, than I have in longer than I can remember. And today she was cranky and tired, but she was still happier.

Thanks be to pumping.

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