Stacey Simms Blog

Halloween

I don't hate Halloween, but I can't say I've been looking forward to it. 

We tried to get the pumpkin patch this year.  The Saturday we'd set aside to do it, Benny got sick.  That 2-3 day fever thing that was going around.  We'd made plans to go with some friends of ours, and their little girl had the same thing just a week earlier.  We rescheduled for the following Saturday but that was the day after all the rain we (finally) got and we didn't want to deal with all the mud.  So this year we have no pumpkins. 

We have lots of fake pumpkins.  A few years ago Target had light up pumpkins that just looked cool to me, so I bought a bunch.  We have about six purple, green and orange fake, light up pumpkins.  We also have a huge inflatable witch in our front  yard.  Not my idea.  Three years ago my brother-in-law David was staying with us for a while.  He and Slade went out the day of Halloween and found this witch on sale.  It looks ridiculous but the kids like it.  Actually, Benny likes it when he's inside the house.  He doesn't like walking past it - he covers his eyes and says he's hiding from the witch.  I tried to tell him she's just a balloon - he told me to make her fly away into the sky like he's seen his balloons from Harris Teeter do.  Smart kid.

So what do you do with a diabetic kid on Halloween?  We were just at Benny's pediatric endocrinologist - had a great checkup by the way, great A1c number, hooray!   On the way out, they gave us a huge list of popular Halloween candy with the carb count for each item.  There was even a cute picture of a vampire saying, "I vant your blood" and holding a blood glucose meter.  Nice to have a doctor's office with a sense of humor!

Benny can absolutely have a little bit of Halloween candy, but he can't have as much as we've let Lea dig into in years past and we can't have it sitting around the house for days and days.  I've got a plan, but I'm not sure how well it'll work.  I told Benny last night that Halloween is a holiday where you run around the neighborhood and collect candy from friends.  Then you eat a little bit of candy that night and trade the rest for toys.  He thought that sounded great.

Lea isn't quite so sure, so for her, I've sweetened the pot.  I've told her she can keep five days worth of candy, two pieces a day.  She's can hand over the rest for toy money.  I'll give her a quarter for each piece of candy and we'll go to the toy store over the weekend.  She immediately asked, "A quarter for each package of candy or each piece of candy?"  Gotta love the way that kid's mind works, but I am not forking over $.25 for every last M&M!  I should have made it a dime.  She's going to get so much candy for so much cash that she'll probably wind up with a real Barbie car.

My guess is that tonight Lea will go out with her friends (and her dad) and go to as many homes as they can as fast as they can.  We live in a huge neighborhood and I bet she'll come home with more than 100 packages of candy.  Benny, on the other hand, will probably make it to about 4 homes before he starts freaking out at the costumes and being out in the dark.  He'll be my giving-out-candy buddy at home. 

Tomorrow I'll let you know how it all went.  I'll post candy amounts, dollar amounts and blood sugar numbers!  No bets on which will be highest.

Me and the Mayor (again)

"My Life As A Jewish Working Woman."  That was the subject of a speech I gave to the Charlotte Chapter of Hadassah earlier this week.  It was a thank you event for their donors and it was a lot of fun.

I shared the bill with Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory.  When I got to the event, there were huge signs with the picture of us together.  The one from the Rotary Club golf tournamnet when I've just beat his shot!  I was a little worried when I arrived and saw the posters, but the Mayor is such a good sport.  He even signed one of the posters for me.

I spoke for a while about work-life balance (hah, hah) and about how my husband and I helped start a new congregation.  It's the Lake Norman Jewish Congregation, by the way, and we're 80 families strong right now and growing.  I also teach at our Sunday school.  It's probably the most rewarding experience I've ever had.

I was up way too late for a Sunday night (I didn't get home until after 10pm!) but it was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I went. 

Here's a picture of the Hadassah President Heidi Rotberg, Mayor McCrory, me and the event chair, Roz Cooper.  You can click on it to make it bigger.  Yes, I'm still learning how to use the new blog template!

A Bad Button

We love our insulin pump. It's really changed how we treat Benny's diabetes, gives us more flexibility and allows us to let him eat almost whatever he wants. The only problem is when there's a problem. And we had a big one yesterday.

Benny's "button" came out at daycare. That's what we call the inset, the way the pump is actually attached to his body. The button's come out once before and our care providers know what to do. They're just incredible people and I'm so grateful for the way they take care of our little guy. They replaced the button and went on as usual. But something was wrong. Benny's numbers started going up. When they checked him - and Slade had just arrived to pick him up - he was above 500. If your blood sugar stays that high, it can get dangerous.

(here's a good explanation of how an insulin pumps works)

Slade gave him a huge dose of insulin and took him home. I was at gymnastics with Lea (every Thursday!) and he called me with the update. I wanted to run home, but Slade knows what he's doing, Benny seemed in a decent mood, considering he probably felt really lousy, and he was eating a snack - which is a good sign. Sometimes when he's really high he doesn't feel like eating.

On the way home, I warned Lea we might be in for a rough night. I wasn't trying to scare her, but I wanted to prepare her in case Benny was sick. I was worried about ketoacidosis. We haven't had a scare that like yet, but a friend had just told Slade her teenage son with Type I had let his blood sugar run high for two days and he was throwing up and sick. Scary stuff. I also told Lea that her brother might be just fine, and we'd have to see what we got when we got home. She wasn't phased. She had a few new books from school - High School Music the Junior Novel!! - so she was set for a while.

We walked in the door at a pretty tense time. Slade had decided the new "button" wasn't working so he replaced it again. Every once in a blue moon the cannula will be inserted into a capillary and it doesn't seem to get the insulin where it needs to go. That's what happened to us the very first night we started on the pump. You can tell because when you pull the button off, the skin will bleed. That shouldn't happen.

So Slade replaced the button AND gave Benny an insulin shot. His first shot since going on the pump in July. Sad about that, but it's more important that we got the insulin in him and get his blood sugar down. Then we hooked the pump back up and started checking his blood sugar every half hour.

A few minutes after I walked in the door we decided to check for ketones. Benny loves this. I don't know why peeing in a cup is such fun, but that's party time at my house. Luckily, he was negative. Just after that, the insulin shot seemed to kick in and you could tell he was feeling a lot better.

A good, but late, bedtime and great blood sugar numbers all night long. Whew!
I was scared we'd be up all night, but both kids were asleep by 9pm and no trouble overnight. All good till next time!

Movin' Out

The next time you read this blog, it may look a little different. We're working on moving it to a different sort of site. I admit, I have very little idea how this all works, but I think we need to make a change.

Right now, my host is "blogger," an amazing website that lets anybody post a blog about anything. The downside of this is, anybody can post a blog about anything. Turns out, a lot of people like to write about, and post pictures of, stuff that is for mature audiences only. And you can actually get there from here.

See that tab up on top of the page? It says "next blog." Click it and you'll go to a randomly generated blog page. Could be movie reviews from Spain, some kid's homework in India, or dirty pictures from right here in the USA.

I don't expect a lot of kids to read this blog, but I'm not thrilled that what I write could be linked, even inadvertently, to pornography. So we're moving. Hopefully, it'll only take a few days to pack up and find a new home. There goes the neighborhood.

Under Cover

For some reason, I've been thinking more lately about what I put on under my clothes. This all started for me when Keith Larson spent a whole show talking about an undergarment that enhances the size of your rear. I don't remember what it's called (please don't ask!) but it's only sold locally at one store.

I found myself right near that shop on some other business and I couldn't resist going in to find out more. You see, it has perhaps the best retail name ever: I C London. Don't get the joke? Do you see France?

Turns out, there is an entire universe of undergarments I knew nothing about! I'm not talking about the usual stuff here. There's a whole industry now to provide smoothing and cinching of body parts I don't usually think of as underwear friendly. Arms, for example. Your entire leg, down to the ankle. Apparently, there are women who would be horrified at the idea of wearing a 19th century corset but who think nothing of encasing their entire bodies in a stocking sausage thing.

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but just a little. A few days after I went into I C London, I saw this article in the NY Times Dining Section. The Dining section! Please. It's not like you can eat comfortably while wearing this stuff.

This is where I'm supposed to talk about being a strong woman and not giving in to "image," etc. Whatever. I went back to I.C. London last week and bought something called "slim cognito." Don't judge me - I have a very formal event coming up with a very clingy dress. We'll see how it works out. I know I won't look like her, but I'm afraid I'll feel like Scarlett O'Hara cinching in that 17-inch waist!!

Read the Label!!

I haven't written about our daily life with diabetes in quite a while. We seemed to get the hang of using the pump and even though it's not yet a year, it's actually hard to remember what things were like before Benny's diagnosis. A reminder this week that we're still learning.

We check Benny's blood sugar (also called blood glucose or bg) several times a day, sometimes as many as 8-10 times during they day and even overnight. We use a lancet to prick his finger and get a drop of blood. That goes onto a test strip inserted in a meter, which gives us his bg number. Here's more info on how it all works.

The test strips come in little cylindrical containers - they look almost like what 35mm film comes in. Each little container has a number on it. When you put the test strip into the meter, the same number should come up. On our meter you have to manually reset that number each time you change containers. After that, you just press "okay" on the meter when the number comes up.

We been doing this for about 10 months now (wow) and we know the drill. Or so we thought. For about two and half days we were getting crazy bg numbers. 95 one hour, 405 an hour later when Benny hadn't eaten anything. Or 250 overnight and 350 in the morning. Just didn't make sense. We didn't know if the pump was broken or if the inset was off. Finally, Slade figured it out.

Seems that when I changed from the #11 canister to the #17 canister I mixed up the numbers and never reset the meter. 17 looks just like 11, right? We got lucky. The only time Benny really got low was right after Slade figured out the problem and checked him. A quick juice box and we're off and running.

More frustration, one night later. We usually check Benny about an hour after he falls asleep. I go into his room, hold a small flashlight in my mouth (I need both hands!), prick his finger and get the number. Then, if we need to, we treat him using the pump he wears 24/7. Believe it or not, he usually sleeps through it. This time, though, it took me five test strips, woke him up, he's telling me to give him the flashlight, he wants to turn it off. Aarrgh!! At least the number was great when I finally got it.

The Mayor and Me

Yes, that's Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory showing me some respect. We're both laughing so hard I'm surprised the picture even came out! Here's what happened:

This week Al & I played in the Charlotte Rotary Club's annual golf tournament - it's a great time, tons of people and they raise lots of money for scholarships. Instead of putting us in a foursome, they sat us out on one of the par 3 for a "beat the pro" contest. One of us would hit and if the other players got closer to the hole than we did, they'd win a prize.

The weather was great and we had a terrific time. We made a lot of people very happy, because for every good shot we hit, we shanked a lousy one nowhere near the green! They gave out a lot of prizes. You can see some more pictures at WBT's photo gallery.

But timing is everything - my best shot of the day (thisclose!) came when the Mayor's foursome came through. They couldn't beat me and you see the Mayor's reaction. It was very funny, but I was completely mortified. You see, the Mayor takes a lot of heat from WBT - our talk show hosts beat him up pretty consistently. Turns out, he can't even get a break on the golf course!

Anyway, Mayor, thanks for being such a great sport and giving me a moment of glory. I'd love to play a round with you sometime - I promise not to outdrive you. Much.