He's Not Gumby, Dammit!

The four of us drove to Massachusetts for Brendon's endo appointment this morning. The three kids and I had a nice ride down with no fighting and no bathroom stops on the side of the road.

There are 3 issues:

A. His A1C went up to a 7.3 (but that is excellent and I'm happy with it...I don't focus on it going up...whatever the end result is is what counts)

B. He has high cholesterol

C. He has been sneaking food we've forbidden him (and Jess and Jake) to have.

Technology rocks the casbah since I don't have to flip through the logs and fill in the blanks in preparation for the endo.

Everything is downloaded from the pump and interpeted into pie graphs, lists of numbers, etc.

So, the endo looks everything over, asks Brendon directly about his lifestyle (afterall, he's the patient and old enough to speak for himself) and then she studies the numbers and makes some changes.

There was a change made by her directly to his pump, bumping up his breakfast and supper ratios as well as his overnight basal rates.

And then I asked her how old she was when she was diagnosed. She said she was 4 years old. After looking for it for the past 5 years, I finally spied her pump. It was hanging on her belt loop.

I asked her if she had eating issues, and she said no. I asked how her mother dealt with food while she grew up. She said her family generally ate healthy. She eats as healthy as possible now, she has friends who have the same healthy lifestyle, and her best friend is one of the nutritionists at the hospital. So she surrounds herself with people who are like-minded which helps her to keep on top of her nutrition.

I discussed with her an episode for which Brendon is now grounded for a week (No TV is killing him). He was told he couldn't have ice cream bars I had bought for myself. He was caught in the middle of eating one in the early morning, and we had warned him if he ate any more, he'd be grounded. The next morning, around 5 a.m., he ate 4 of them one right after the other. He dosed himself though.

She said don't go overboard with restrictions. As long as he covers what he eats, then it's OK. And if he did something he was forbidden to do, wait until we're calm and tell him we'll discuss the outcome at that time.

We don't restrict treats like cakes and cookies although they're not even a weekly occurance. Treats are pretty random.

I feel that maybe he, and Jacob and Jessica, go crazy over junk food because they don't know when the next treat is coming, so they get it while they can.

And Brendon has the will of a bull, so to trying to bend him to our own will is impossible, and not very fair....he's not Gumby, dammit.

He'll need to deal with food in a special way for the rest of his life, and we need to teach him how to deal with it according to how his own character is rather than tailor it to our character. I respect him as a person and for who he already is, not who I expect him to be.

We do, however, have expectations of him and his siblings (he will never be singled out....what is good for him is good for all of us as a family). We expect them to eat fruits and vegetables and lean meats for the best health and energy they can have.

But, treats make life a lot more fun, and when you have to deal with testing, bolusing, counting, subtracting, weighing and measuring, fun is good to have around.

I plan to make treats predictable by having dessert every Sunday night. I hope that if they know when it's coming, and that it will always be there when they expect it, they won't feel the need to cling to everything they set their sights on as a desperate way to fill that need to hoard when they don't know when the next treat is coming.

I'm trying to do things in the most logical and reasonable way while making sure my kids are well taken care of.

I'm sure they'll sneak goodies and still eat them in back of the couch. But, maybe they won't do it as much now that they have a steady supplier to feed their fix.