He Growed Up

Watching your kids grow is sort of like watching the grass grow. You don't see changes happen minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. It takes being away for a while, and then coming back to notice how tall the grass grew.

Being that a parent is with their child day in and day out, you don't really see changes unless you compare pictures of them taken months or years apart.

On Brendon's last day of school, I could've sworn he looked different. He looked older, like his face was thinning a bit, his neck grew a little longer....was he up to my shoulder already?

Of course I chalked it up to my mind playing tricks on me because he was ending one grade and would soon be a big shot second grader. So I figured my brain was casting illusions of him noticeably changing due to power of suggestion.

A couple of weeks ago, Brendon's numbers started skyrocketing. It was all I could do to keep him no more than 250. At night, I would correct him 100% where normally, we would typically give him a 50% correction if he needed a correction at all.

Bouncing with lows of 250, to highs of 400, I thought it was bad infustion sets, maybe the pump wasn't performing properly, or even the insulin was bad, but those were all soon ruled out.

Jeff had raised his basal rates throughout the day, but with little effect. We're always hesitant to change his rates because Murphy's Law dictates that as soon as we do that, his numbers will flip back to normal and with the raised rates, lows would occur.

But because the bump up in rates barely made a dent, Jeff raised them some more to a full unit spread throughout the day.

So far, his numbers have been where we wanted them. So far, his numbers haven't flipped back to where they once were. I think his body went from one stage of growth to the next so that his insulin is permanently fixed for now. I suspected that it might be a growth spurt large enough to bring him to that next level.

I measured him in the doorway where the kids' heights have been marked for the past couple of years. And what do you know. He grew an inch and a half in just a couple of months. Most of it I believe occured in the past month.

Diabetes is a rotten awful condition. But sometimes it gives a neat little portal into the body that provides eye witness to changes that people wouldn't be able to experience otherwise. Although, I'll settle for a tape measure.