On Her Own

Gracie is my independent peanut. Truly.

A couple of weeks ago the battery on Gracie’s One Touch Ultra 2 died. Me, the ever fiscally responsible one, determined that it would be cheaper for us to REPLACE her glucometer than to replace the batteries. Shoving her “old” glucometer aside for when purchasing batteries is cheaper than purchasing an entire new glucometer, we opened the joy that a new glucometer is.

It really wasn’t all that different, except for the fact that the new finger pokers are awful little, which just so happens to work fairly well for my awfully little Gracie. The end result of all of this? Gracie is now successfully checking her blood sugar by herself. She is four, so she still isn’t quite reading the numbers, but she is checking her blood sugar herself and bringing the meter to me to look at. Quite a crafty little girl she is. She took it upon herself to learn how to do this, and me being the ever-scrupulous warden of much-too-little time, figured this would be a great way for her to take more control of her diabetes and at the same time allot me a few extra moments whenever the time may be that she needs to check her blood sugar.

Fabulous really.

I’ve read of other parents feeling sad as their child takes on more independence in their diabetes care. I waited to feel sad, some mopiness, something. But I just didn’t feel that. I have been living with diabetes for over 16 years, and I know better than many that if Gracie is going to have success with her care it is going to be because of things SHE does. I hope that I can lead by example, and I hope I can light a fire under her to want to invest the kind of time, energy, and emotion that diabetes requires for management, but in the end, it is ALL ON HER.

I understand she is four. She doesn’t have to do all of this yet. Yes, she is four, and my heart has broken a thousand times because of her diabetes diagnosis. But, imagine what she will be doing independently with her diabetes care when she is eight? She is four, and she is fabulous, and she is starting to take ownership of her diabetes care. And that is just awesome.