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Permalink Reply by MyBustedPancreas on July 15, 2012 at 10:00am

As a T1, here's my advice - As much as possible, teach her to be independent. She's at that age where you never know what invite she's going to get some place, and she needs to be able to keep herself safe and healthy even when away from home. It's reassuring both for her and you!

When something goes wrong, make her work to figure out how to solve the issue. Make her troubleshoot high BGs and do site changes and be responsible for packing all the stuff she needs when she leaves the house. Have her walk you through what she would do in the event that her site failed or she lost her insulin while away from home. Have her rehearse with you how she would go about informing others of her condition, but let her choose who she tells. Work with her to theoretically troubleshoot scary issues, like accidentally giving herself too much insulin (we all do it from time to time) or forgetting a bolus or dealing with a really high BG with ketones.

For a long time, I resented having to learn all this stuff. But then I got to the point where I was so confident BECAUSE I knew how to do all these things, and that confidence meant that T1 was NEVER an excuse for me. I've never let it stop me from doing something that I wanted to do, and I am so grateful to my parents for that, because they taught me what I needed to know to keep myself alive.

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Permalink Reply by christy on July 15, 2012 at 10:09am

Thats wonderful advice MyBustedPancreas, absolutely nothing to add to it.

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Permalink Reply by BadMoonT2 on July 16, 2012 at 4:53am

Large institutions like the military and disaster response agency's see the value in rehearsing various scenarios so that when confronted with the real thing the response is quick and well thought out.

Great advice MyBustedPancreas!

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Permalink Reply by NatalieHodge on July 19, 2012 at 10:13am

wow! we are working on all those things now, just want her to be ready and not overwhelmed... she's such a trouper, really, and a few daysago she said MOM I JUST NEED MORE INSULIN... so we got more aggressive in cranking up her doses and went through my pumping insulin chapter on resetting settings to regain control, she felt so much better about it now...

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Permalink Reply by MyBustedPancreas on July 19, 2012 at 7:03pm

That's great news! I can tell you that high blood sugars make you feel horrid. I get the worst headaches and dry mouth and I just feel generally cranky and tired. Coming back into range can sometimes make me feel like I'm going low, but it's way better that being high.

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