My neighbor, George, told me he planted that cherry tree by accident. He thought they would be table cherries. But I was glad they weren’t. I prefer pie cherries. Pie cherries are special. I want to pick them, badly, but I’m tired. I’ve got emotions about those cherries. And picking that tree takes three days.
I want to pick them because George is 85 and he loves to garden. My family eats as much of his garden food as we can. Not just because it’s delicious. But because how can I let George watch his food rot? I can’t. That’s inhumane.
After you pick the cherries, you have to pit them. And then you have to freeze them into quart bags. To process the whole tree takes about 20 hours, maybe more. It’s a labor of love. I save the cherries for special occasions. Like birthdays and Pie Day.
Pie is my love language. But now my kid has diabetes, and I have no clue how much insulin to give for cherry pie. Nor do I know what sort of timing to use. And whether we will be up all night dealing with the repercussions of that learning curve. I'm almost certain we would be.
Someday we'll know how to eat cherry pie. Three weeks ago I was terrified for Ash to eat an apple, but we figured that out. Last week I had trepidation over fish sticks. But it turns out fish sticks are a breeze.
Eventually we can practice cherry pie.
We learned Ash had Type 1 on May 2nd at urgent care during a visit which we imagined was for a skin infection, but turned out to be about diabetes. They made it sound like “probably” he had diabetes. But he should figure it out for sure at an appointment with his regular doctor. When I called his pediatrician, the receptionist tried to schedule us for May 10th.
“Excuse me… did you understand that I said DIABETES? I feel pretty certain that folks don’t wait for a week to get an appointment about diabetes. We don’t have insulin. We don’t know what he’s supposed to eat. Are you kidding me?”
We ended up with an appointment for the next day at 4:00.
When we went to that appointment, we met with a doctor who had a really unusual speech impediment and odd social skills. I’m not criticizing him. I’m just doing my best to describe the scene accurately. Due to the way he spoke, I honestly thought he was deaf at first. So I took off my mask to make sure he could read my lips. Even though there were signs posted everywhere stating that we all had to wear masks, only about 50% of the people were wearing masks, Including the nurses and doctors.
This doctor was socially very askew. Incredibly indirect for a doctor. In retrospect, I think he didn’t want to tell a 15-year-old and his mom that they now have diabetes. He was asking tons of questions. The usual diabetes questions. Are you thirsty all the time? Do you have to pee constantly? Can I smell your breath to see if it’s fruity?
He was talking in circles. It seemed like he was genuinely struggling with the diagnosis. Even though now I know that all the numbers in ash’s labs were flashing DIABETES at us in neon lights.
I wish that doctor would have just said, “Yes. You have type 1. You need to go to the hospital now.”
But instead, he hemmed and hawed and spoke with I’m really flummoxed and mystified intonation. Ash answered “no” to all his questions. No… he wasn’t wetting the bed. No he wasn’t constantly thirsty. And when the Dr. asked to smell his breath, he agreed. Ash’s breath smelled like mouth. Not fruit.
The doctor kept making “well… I’m thinking…” sounds. And walking out of the room. And checking in with other people. And then finally, after making Ash and I both think that maybe there had been some giant mistake. That maybe this was going to be the-time-we-spent-24-hours-thinking-we-had-diabetes-but-didn’t-really. The Dr. was like “I’ve called the hospital. They are getting a room ready for you right now. You’ll stay there for 3 or 4 days.”
“So we definitely have diabetes?” I ask.
“Oh yeah. I can’t believe they let you go home from Urgent Care. You should have been in the hospital last night.”
Even though we got admitted on May 3rd, I will always keep May 4th in my brain as diabetes day. Because, you know… “May the Fourth be With You.”
There was a giant Chewbacca in the hospital room waiting for us. And a BB8 hospital gown which Ash never touched, and even though we politely brought it home from the hospital at their encouragement, we threw it away before we even walked in the front door of our house.
He kept Chewbacca.
The diabetes educator was on maternity leave, so there was very little verbal instruction. Mostly they gave us a binder and told me to read it. The second night in the hospital was, without a doubt, the worst night of my life.
Now our life is completely different from how it was.
We both spend a lot of time practicing new skills. Every few days I call the diabetes educators at OHSU. They are wonderful. Diabetes takes up a lot of time. Much of it is spent on hold. I have not yet figured out how to go back to work.
Also, now we go to the gym.
I had a pretty serious mental block about the gym. I blew random stuff way out of proportion, and had lots of emotions, because really I just didn’t want to go to the gym. But that’s the way Ash prefers to exercise. So that’s what we do. And I’m used to it now.
Just like now I’m used to writing the carb count with a sharpie when we put away the leftovers. And I’m used to spending an extra half hour whenever we make a stew or soup, calculating all the carbs that have been added to the pot, and estimating Ash’s portion and dividing.
I’m learning to wrap my brain around how important it is to embrace both precision and guesswork at the same time. That’s hard for me.
I don’t drink or smoke pot anymore. Because I can’t afford to have a cloudy brain. Ever. I used to partake in one or both of those activities, daily… so that’s a pretty big change. Now my primary vice is Yerba Maté.
Ash has gotten used to having to choose in advance exactly how much he’s going to eat at each meal. Because seconds are a pain in the ass.
All 9 of us are getting used to eating our food lukewarm instead of hot. Because it’s best to shoot your insulin 20 minutes before you eat. And it's hard to know how much you are going to eat before you see all the food. Sometimes that means cold noodles.
I’m getting used to waking up multiple times a night to decide if he should drink juice or eat a bar. And if his graph and numbers are in the bar zone, I glance through my apothecary of bars. Nature Valley, Special K, Kind Bars, and all the weird bougie ones I bought before I realized they have what I need way cheaper at Rite Aid.
I scrutinize his blood sugar graph. The slant of it. Which ratio of carbs to protein might get us through the night without having to wake up again?
I choose one and it takes me 7 minutes to get him to eat it, pretty much in his sleep. And then I spend the next 30 minutes laying next to him. Staring at the graph… wondering if I chose correctly. And wondering what I’m going to do about his teeth. I can’t make him get up and brush his teeth two times in the middle of the night.
I spend so much time making phone calls, filling out forms, scheduling appointments… sometimes I honestly forget that it’s his diabetes and not mine.
Two days ago at the gym, on the elliptical, I was watching his blood sugar on my phone. Seeing it higher than I wanted it to be, I moved my body faster, thinking for 5 seconds that if I pushed harder I could knock the blood sugar down. And then I remembered… I can't take his diabetes and put it in my body.
I can read and study and plan and count and weigh and measure. I can record and calculate. I can wake up 14 times a night and buy 8 different kinds of protein bars. But none of that will take that diabetes out of him and put it into me.
I can’t do this for him.
That’s the hardest part.