Making Mistakes While Diabetes Parenting

Today, I made yet another diabetes parenting mistake. We were at lunch with some of Sacha’s friends to celebrate his sixth birthday. It was busy, loud, and my wife and I were trying to be gracious hosts with the kids and other adults, while also keeping an eye on Sacha’s intake of milk, pizza, and birthday cake. Pizza is always a flashpoint for Sacha – he loves it, but it causes elevated blood sugars for prolonged periods – and after weighing a portion and determining the overall carb count, I laboriously typed in a combo bolus. The restaurant was dark, it was hard to see, and I was in the middle of a conversation with another parent. 

Five hours later, his blood glucose was 485. I checked his bolus history, and realized that somehow, I’d messed up the combo bolus; it hadn’t gone through.

I reflected this evening on all the mistakes I’d made over the last four years of Sacha’s diabetes. Once, when he was on shots, I mixed up his long acting and rapid acting insulins; that was a six hour hospital stay. Another time, I overdosed him on rapid, and we dealt with it at home. Countless times, I’ve miscounted carbs and wrongly dosed…messed up pump insertions……forgotten to prime…etc.

It’s one thing to make a mistake on yourself. Quite another to make it on your little boy. I looked at his face carefully this evening while explaining that daddy had made a mistake with the insulin pump at lunch…what was going through his mind ? How does a little kid process that kind of thing? What does it do to his sense of trust? 

James Ron

James Ron is an American, Israeli, and Canadian academic, whose son, Sacha, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of two. Until then, James had never heard of the disease. Today, James is a member of the scientific and advisory group of Life for a Child, an Australia-based charity that supplies insulin and other diabetes supplies to children and youth in the developing world. James teaches international affairs and human rights at the University of Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Emma, and their two children, Tessa and Sacha.

James Ron

James Ron is an American, Israeli, and Canadian academic, whose son, Sacha, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of two. Until then, James had never heard of the disease. Today, James is a member of the scientific and advisory group of Life for a Child, an Australia-based charity that supplies insulin and other diabetes supplies to children and youth in the developing world. James teaches international affairs and human rights at the University of Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Emma, and their two children, Tessa and Sacha.