Yes, I know it could be worse........

The pretty girl in the pink prom dress....my oldest, Cat. She's a very active, smart, witty 17 year old girl. Spent last weekend in the hospital, we found out she has type 1 diabetes. She hasn't been really sick, she isn't dying. Adjust eating habits, inject what your body can no longer make, completely manageable. I know it could be so much worse, that there are people out there in waaaaaayyyy worse shape than she is. There are few things in life harder for a parent than when something, even a minor something, is wrong with your child. This is not the life I hoped for her. What a way to start the beginning of your senior year.

Now I watch my formerly social butterfly as she becomes a hermit crab. Pulling into a shell, away from her friends, frustrated because, even though she measures everything that she's putting into her body, her body is declaring mutiny, from highs of 526 to a "low" (for her) of 80. I watched my daughter shake, sweat, turn beet red, and cry because she felt so horrible as her body just went postal on her. I was cool, calm and collected all the way through it, got her numbers back up. After she felt better and went to bed, I went to the grocery store to replace the orange juice, get her a Kit Kat bar for the next one, and cried for the next 4 hours. Then, I stayed up til 4 in the morning, poking that poor kid every hour just to make sure she hadn't gone low again.

Fast forward to tonight, she finally decided to join her friends for a night of movies. The doctor and the dietician told her she could eat what she wanted, she just had to be willing to take the insulin for it. Tonight she had Pizza Hut pizza. Just a couple of pieces, she took her insulin. Blood sugar 526. She gave herself her first Lantus shot tonight. She and Mary (my second daughter) came home from Brooke's house so she could get it at 8. She left her kit here. Granted, she's only 4 blocks away, but she forgot it.

Now, I know I'm being a spaz, but a friend of mine died when she had a low and couldn't get herself corrected. The only other person in her house was her 3 year old daughter, who couldn't wake her mommy up. Last week I was worrying about how to get past my first child being a senior, turning 18 and going off to college. Getting her braces off, senior pictures, blah, blah, blah. This week, when I close my eyes, or allow myself to think about it, that's what I remember first. College now seems a long time away, and I'm wondering how to get past the fact that she'll be going to camp, 2 hours away, without her dad and I there, for a week. Yes, they have medical staff. Yes, she'll be with family friends (adults) and her sister and their friends. Yes, she'll most likely be fine and enjoy the week. But I'm scared. And worried. And I hate this. I save my little pity parties for when my family is sleeping, and I stew over the worst case scenario. Last week seems a lifetime ago. How do people do this when it's worse than diabetes?

On a lighter note, I drove with my older son for the first time last week. When we were done, I told my husband that I need a box of Depends before I get in the car with him in the driver's seat again. AND, did you know that when you drop your keys down the elevator shaft, the maintenance person CAN retrieve them? Yep, tested that first hand for myself this past weekend, gave the nurses quite a good laugh.

The sewer backed up, the washing machine drained into my basement (my husband called me at 11:30 Saturday night at the hospital) to tell me that while it had flooded the basement, it had also gushed up like a fountain from the hole where the toilet should be in the downstairs bathroom (we're remodeling). The kids thought that was very cool. Me, not so much. Sewer dude came out Tuesday, turned the clean out top just a little, icky stuff came spewing into the front yard. Our dog, who licks his own private and hind parts, had the nerve to turn his nose up when he next went outside. Excuse me, but if you can eat cat poop, you can pee there, pal. By the way, part of our line collapsed in the front yard, heading out to the main line.

On the last day of school, my youngest son was awarded student of the month, he worked so hard to bring his reading grade up 2 letter grades! And our little Miss Rachel (number 4 in the lineup) won her award for being on the high honor roll list for the 8th quarter in a row. Nuttin' but 5.0 records for her (and Mary, but high school is not so forthcoming with the awards for underclassmen, LOL). The end of another school year that seems to have just started. Now onto summer, except it's not warming up here or drying out very much. I usually like the first two weeks of summer, lazy, don't have to be anywhere days. Then, the fighting and the I'm bored things start. Until we reach my very favorite day of the year........the first day of school.

Well, much like spring, we seemed to have skipped that lovely first two weeks part and moved straight into 3rd week of summer, because the fighting has commenced. And my boys learned some very interesting words that I KNOW did not appear on any vocab test. Oh, happy day!