Day 9 - Eleventh Camp Blog Entry (First post for Session 2)
July 26th, 2009 by SteveDiabetes care has never been more overrun by new therapies and technology than today. What’s certain is that this trend will continue. I’ve lived with diabetes through many different “revolutions” in its management, starting with disposable syringes, smaller sharper needles, U-100 insulin, clinitest tablets, ketostix strips, self blood glucose monitoring, insulin pump therapy, human insulin, analog insulin, glucose sensors and everything else in-between. Many of you may not understand the initial references I just made while others may be able to add many more. Having a historical perspective on type 1 diabetes helps many of us understand how far we have come but also how much of a business that diabetes care has become. We drive an economic engine within the health care industry that is only getting larger as our ranks continue to swell.
My posts this week will be different than last week, even though we have a new group of campers. I refer any parents who want get more on my thoughts of childhood diabetes and camp to previous blog posts archived on this site which are also tagged under the category “TLC 2009″.
Quality diabetes self care is a process, not a device or new drug. This is because of the myriad of choices that go into managing constant shifts in blood sugar that occur to every mammal on this planet. In the case of young people, their team MUST include the family. To do less only harms the child or teen. Ironically, we seem to always be looking for ways to transfer many of the key day to day self care skills at younger and younger ages. As Barbara Anderson is well known to say, children and teens almost always lack the emotional muscle to match the physical muscle they use (or should use) to perform frequent daily self care tasks.
The next week will provide yet another window into how diabetes is (and isn’t) managed well in children from across the state of Texas. This camp has been the single greatest teacher in my lifelong study of diabetes in children. I return here each year to learn as well as to serve.
Today’s Diabetes Challenge question of the day asks “who is on your diabetes team?”. Are you a “Lone Ranger” or backed by the Verizon wireless guy and the “power of the network”? While we often applaud the “go it alone” approach and individual initiative in others, diabetes care is best approached as a team sport. The question is who is on your team? Who are the key players that play a pivotal role in how you live day to day with your diabetes or in the life of your child’s diabetes? Furthermore, how much of your success do you attribute to yourself and how much can you directly attribute to others on your team? How many of you wish you had a larger team? A smaller team? A more relaxed team? A more involved team? Perhaps you think that diabetes self care is just that: SELF CARE; and no one else needs to be involved. Be honest and be specific.
Stay in virtual touch with diabetes camp
I am posting daily blogs here about important diabetes issues that directly relate to the camp and posing controversial questions to you as above. I’m also tweeting very frequently from camp. Check out my twitter site: http://twitter.com/Dr_Steve_Ponder . My tweets are real time observations from camp (plus twitpics) as they happen, sent immediately from my mobile phone. I’m discussing how things are going and any special problems or situations that all parents of children with diabetes would benefit from. I’ll also answer questions posted to this blog site as quickly as I can. You can also check out the camp’s website at http://www.lionscamp.com where you can check out daily photographs from the day before. As always, we will be preparing a complementary DVD photo album for all campers to be provided at check out on Friday evening.
Parent’s Webinar on Wednesday Evening
A Parents Day Webinar will be held at 8-9PM CST on Wednesday July 29th 2009. Go to the TLC webinar site now for the details on how to participate. It’s totally free and can be accessed from the comfort of your home PC, laptop or just call in using your telephone. Even if you don’t have a webcam, you can dial in to the conference bridge. I’ll be discussing camper progress at camp to date, key observations about how campers are stacking up compared to each other, and address some major hot button issues in type 1 diabetes care of children in 2009. There are several hot topics I’ll be addressing. Join in and listen, or submit questions on line in the Q&A section of the Live Meeting toolbar during the webinar. See you in cyberspace! Also feel free to suggest topics via comments to the blog posts below. (New comments are approved so if this is your first time it may take an hour or two before you see your comment online).
Last 5 posts by Steve
- Halloween and Diabetes CAN mix! - October 5th, 2009
- Introducing Healthy Families of South Texas - October 5th, 2009
- Complications 101 - About Kidney Failure - August 23rd, 2009
- The Sleep Bolus - August 18th, 2009
- The Dirty Truth Behind DCCT - August 16th, 2009
July 26th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Most of the time, I feel like the lone ranger constantly checking on things: did you bolus, did you check for airbubbles, do you need a site change, did you measure the carbs in that snack, does the cartridge need to be filled, did you check your bg after/before a meal? I do, however, feel very fortunate to have help during the school year. I often hear of school districts that have no nurse or very little support for the type 1 diabetic. I count my blessings EVERY school day that my child is in the care of a competent nurse who is very knowledgeable of Type 1 diabetes. We often make decisions together on his care at school. I know our school district does not HAVE to provide the number of nurses that we have, but I certainly appreciate their support and understanding. I happen to have the added benefit of teaching in the district, and I have always been allowed to tend to my child’s needs when necessary.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
We try to take a team approach, and we have some help from the schools through the school nurse, though that support has appeared to decrease as Katie has moved up in school. In elementary and middle school the nurses were extremely involved and very attentive. That has not been our experience with high school. I am unsure if that is because the nurses are overwhelmed with the numbers of students or if it is more difficult to take that approach with 14/15 year olds. We continue to try and engage the school staff, but have found the high school to have a very nonchalant approach about helping with diabetes. However, they are obviously aware of the dangers associated with it, our school has a strict policy that a diabetic student cannot participate in ANY activity without parent involvement, and they can never leave the school building for an event/game without a parent on the trip. We do not mind going, in fact we feel more comfortable knowing one of us is there to provide the right care. But it is definately a mixed message that they strictly enforce parental care but appear to take their own nursing care of diabetics with much less concern. We have met with the nurse and staff, we have done education with her teachers, we meet with every single teacher she has. But they still freak out and want to send her home if her blood sugar goes high or low, rather than attempting to correct it. I end up at the school several times weekly helping to stabilize her and then having to check her back in to school.
couple of questions…
How do we get the school staff/nursing staff more involved?
What are the best strategies for managing blood sugars during seasons of intense activity, Katie is in Marching Band? We feel like we end up chasing the highs and lows, when we would rather be able to effectively manage her better? But with the unpredictable schedule of activity is hard to plan.
How do you bring activity teachers, like band directors, more on the team? The attitude seems to be the same as the school’s, “the school requires you to be here for everything we do, so I don’t need to know about it, you are the parent, you deal with it”. Our band directors are terrific, and very concerned about Katie, care about her very much, but do not have enough understanding of how diabetes affects a student. How do we overcome the idea that if the parent is here, we don’t need to know what is going on?
July 28th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
We definitely have a team approach and we love it. We actually homeschool, so we don’t have a school nurse, but we did for one year. She was wonderful, but as Karen stated above, I had to go to the school many times and do things to correct blood sugars. (We did not choose to homeschool because of diabetes.)
For the first 2 years after diagnosis, we had to travel 2 hours to a children’s hospital for our appointments with the endocrinologist. That was very hard, because we have 7 children and 6 of them are home all day. I either had to arrange childcare or take the youngest ones with us.
When our daughter received her pump, we had a call from the nurse who would be doing our pump training. She was not only a local nurse, but she has Type 1, has the same pump as our daughter, and is married to the endocrinologist, who also has Type 1 and the same pump! That was a drastic improvement in our diabetes education and care. We had been told previously that there was no pediatric endo in town who could see our daughter.
Now, we have both of them on our team, and they are amazing, as well as a wonderful eye doctor, dentist, a family physician who is incredible and who is our friend as well as our doctor, close friends of ours who have taken every possible opportunity to educate themselves on diabetes and how to handle all situations, and even our daughter’s best friend, who wakes up and checks her in the night if she is spending the night with us or our daughter is at her house. I have a friend who is a dietitician at Joslin Diabetes Center and is just an email away with any questions I have.
I can’t imagine a better team.
June 24th, 2010 at 7:43 am
That is pretty helpful. It presented me several ideas and I’ll be writing them on my website shortly. I’m bookmarking your blog and I’ll be back. Thanks again!