Thanks guys for saying these last few posts and understanding the needs sometimes for added bonus' for our children. A friend recently took her daughter to one of these parks and this child is normally fairly ok with levels apparently. She was hypo upon arrival due to excitment, they battled hypos and hypers all day long and it was purely down to excitment and adrenalin. They also had the exit passes. Can you imagine their day without the passes. They have the same rights as everyone else to have a great day out and the planning and preparation and heavy bags that go into a day out is so much above and beyond a family without a child with diabetes.
I will be totally honest here and no doubt upset a few people, for which I apologise in advance but I find myself increasingly having to justify how parents today deal with their children's diabetes as it is different to when they were kids. I really want to shout out loud about this as I am so frustrated (sorry very tired, my daughter hit 29.0 last night for no reason so was awake for hours from 2 am trying to bring her down!). Diabetes care today is so very very very very vastly different than 20 odd years ago. We have glucometers now, we have MDI, we have pumps, we have different carb counting, we know what foods do, what exercise does (ie send you up instead of down if you are roughly above 14.0) what adrenaline does. The info at our fingertips is so much more involved and we can therefore try to have much tighter control with our children. This includes planning extensively for days out to keep this tighter control. These queues can be 2 hours long and on a hot day with adrenaline, levels go up, the toilet is needed so you leave the line. What happens then, you join the back again!
Understood, but was it really so easy all those years ago? Consider this: We didn't have disposable syringes, just glass ones with replaceable needles. Before giving an injection my mum had to sterilise the needle and syringe. Try doing that whilst at a theme park!
We didn't have blood glucose monitors. No, we had urine testing tablets which needed the urine to be put in a test tube, then a tablet dropped into it and the colour matched to a chart to work out roughly how high or how low you were. Again, try doing that whilst at a theme park.
Things improved a little when urine tests could be done using testing strips instead of the test tubes and tablets but again, it would require you to go to the toilet to do the test. I don't see how blood testing makes things more difficult when it can be done anywhere and at any time (including whilst standing in a queue).
Fair enough, kids these days tend to have tighter control and have to test more often to achieve this. Really though, would you want to go back to how it was 20 years+ ago? I know I wouldn't. Your kids have more chance of living a long and healthy life BECAUSE of the new testing kits and insulin regimes and, granted they have to do more diabetes-stuff because of it, but I know I'd rather put up with that than go back to glass syringes and test tubes!
With queueing, how are your kids going to cope with places which don't have exit passes? If you ever take them to a cinema on a film's release day, or to santa's grotto at christmas time, how do you deal with that, or do you just not bother? I'd test before joining the queue and, if high then take a trip to the toilet before joining it and, depending how high I am give myself a correction dose. If low, I'd join the queue and have a snack that I took with me from my bag whilst moving along with the queue. Glucose tablets are small so can fit in a pocket if necessary.
I won't apologise any longer for wanting my child to live a normal length of life and to not have the complications that could possibly happen. I want to to be as normal as she can like her friends and like me.
Giving kids with diabetes exit passes will make life easier in the short term, but won't give them the ability to cope and adapt to life in the "real world".
Sorry if I sound shirty but I'm knackered and got all sentimental when I read the messages sticking up for us mums which means so much to me.
