Overcoming the Impulse

Last weekend we took Emerson to see Disney on Ice while it was in Indianapolis. We knew with her love of princesses and curiosity toward ice skating that this would be something she really enjoyed. What we tend to forget about when going to things like this though is how difficult it is when the vendors come around selling things like cotton candy and shaved ice in pretty princess cups. While a benefit of being on an insulin pump is the added flexibility and enhanced ability to manage such scenarios, we keep Emerson’s consumption of treats pretty limited. In fact, we generally only allow her to have special treats (candy, ice cream, etc.) once a week, which we have been able to do with very little issue because Emerson has always been a very good eater and likes a wide variety of foods. It is not that we don’t want her to enjoy being a kid, but her BG has been extremely volatile since day one and we do all we can to keep her in range. So when attending things like this there is always the dreaded food vendor that pops up out of nowhere. We are fortunate that Emerson does not make a big deal about not having these things like the other kids, but it doesn’t make it any easier as we know that it is times like these that make her hate having T1D. We take these opportunities to talk to her about the importance of a healthy diet but it doesn’t take away the heartbreak of her seeing other kids getting things that she is unable to enjoy without getting insulin and the after effects of so much sugar. We are hopeful that helping her to maintain a good diet now will make it easier for her to continue to eat healthy once our ability to control and then influence how she eats is a thing of the past.

We do expect that we will become more relaxed about the occasional splurge in the future. Our experience over the recent holiday period allowed us to see that we can keep her BG relatively stable even when deviating from the normal diet. After 10 months with T1D, we decided to allow Emerson to eat some of the normal holiday treats, but not without a lot of apprehension. She thoroughly enjoyed consuming cookies, cupcakes, and pie over a two week period around Christmas. After surviving the season and looking back we were happy to realize that while we did have the occasional spike and subsequent low, there was virtually no difference in her average daily BG during that period when compared to the weeks before and after. This gave us a good deal of confidence in our ability to effectively dose for these types of foods and keep her somewhat in control. We had an appointment with Emerson’s Endocrinologist right after the holidays and found that her A1c had increased slightly since our last appointment. The doctor immediately thought that this was due to the holidays but we were happy to be able to say that we felt it was not due to that but rather a 10 day stretch that saw numerous periods of elevated BGs due to repeated issues with our pump.