As many of you know, my youngest son is a Type I Diabetic. I have found the learning curve, while steep, to be incredibly fascinating. If there’s some sort of degree that combines nutrition, chemistry, math and nursing in a six month crash course – I’ve earned it, hands down.
One of the most challenging aspects that any parent of a Type I Diabetic will tell you is that there is just simply so much guesswork going on. Every step of the way you’re calculating carbs and insulin and exercise and stress to come up with a magic number that keeps blood glucose from going too high or too low. Right there in front of me is this 6 year old person whose body actually has the correct answers – the right dosing, the right exercise, the right amount of carbs – for any given situation and yet there is just no way, no tool, that can tell us EXACTLY what we need to know.
But, we’re lucky that now we can get closer to finding the best answers. Last week, my son started using a Continuous Glucose Monitor. If you’re curious you can read more about it here. The gist is that he wears a small device on his stomach that automatically calculates his blood glucose every five minutes and then sends the information to a receiver that looks a bit like a cell phone circa 2004. One week in and we’re loving this thing! Suddenly we have all of this important information that helps us make better decisions, faster.
However, here’s the catch…having this much information is addicting. When Sam’s sensor fell off yesterday in the pool and then we had trouble putting on a new one, I just let him keep it off for the night. I found myself really feeling the absence of the constant feed of information that, in just one week, I have come to see as so important…more than important – essential for addressing Sam’s diabetes.
This got me thinking about how we deal with this sort of thing all of the time as expats. We think we know something (or need to know something), we think we can get all the answers we need, whenever we want and then BAM! – no internet, no television, no language skills, no IDEA what’s going on…anywhere! So, I reminded myself that this is not the first time I’ve found myself without information that I’d really like to have. I’ve survived the information void during international transitions, so surely I can use those skills to get over this 15-hour hump of non-continual glucose monitoring. After facing down the hellish void of reduced information (Seriously, how did I grow up in the pre-Google world?) I came up with this personal Q&A for dealing with the space between knowing and not knowing:
1) Is it really necessary to have this info? (Facebook – I’m talking to you!)
2) Have I been able to get by without this information in the past?
3) When I’ve been without this info, what did I do? How did I get things done anyway?
4) What’s the worst thing that could happen?
5) (My favorite) What might be the benefit of not having this information at my fingertips…or breathing down my neck?
To be fair, we’re back to the CGM today – safe and sound. We survived last night. Of course we did, because before 6 days ago that’s what we’d been doing for almost 6 months. I’m happy to have it back though and oddly pleased with having had to handle a forced hiatus. Nothing like going without all that info to make you appreciate what it’s like to have it back.
