Do you want to know what it's REALLY like?

Do you want to know what it's like? Do you REALLY want to know?
It's moments of pure bliss....total happiness at the victories..........and then hours later plummeting crashes to the deepest depths of the earth full of utter defeat. It's thinking that you have won...that you have beaten this bastard of a disease...that you are the one in control...you are not only keeping your kid alive, but you are also responsible for making sure they don't die. That is a tremendous indescribable amount of pressure to walk around with on a daily basis. It's what I would imagine hell to be like. Stuck walking on that tightrope between insanity and the real world for an eternity. It never ends. It never stops. There are no breaks...no time outs...no vacations...it never ends...it's a viscious cycle that goes on and on and on...
We had some of the sweetest victories ever experienced with this disease today. Emma went to a birthday party this afternoon and then immediately afterwards went to her 2 hour long gymnastics class...came home...had supper...and then went to the park until bedtime. I rocked it better than I have ever rocked it in the past 4 years with her blood sugars. I was the perfect pancreas. I kept her from going low. I was warmly greeted with a perfect 5.6 blood sugar at bedtime snack. Did I mention that she had pizza for supper too? Yes....the dreaded pizza that normally would cause crazy spikes and dizzying drops in her blood sugar unless I get the insulin doses JUST so...just perfect enough to have the insulin meet up with the digestion of her pizza. How insanely hard is that? Me...standing outside of her body...trying to determine what is going on inside of her...where the food is in the process of being digested...how quickly the insulin i just gave her is moving through her body. It's a friggin crap shoot. I did it though. I rocked it. She was fine. Alive. Happy. Smiling. Did I mention I also had to do a site change today? I had to do it after supper because of how busy she was today. I moved the pump site to her thigh then. As I went through the same process I have done every three days now for nearly a year, I felt like I was in the zone....I was moving like a machine...doing what my hands know how to do best at this point. As I squeezed the sides of that infusion set to trigger the spring loaded needle to shove the tube into her skin........I felt it......something felt weird.....it felt off. I asked her if it felt normal to her and she said yes....so I blew it off as me being paranoid. I live my life in a constant state of jumping from total paranoia to liveable calmness and peace...familiarity.
Fast forward 4 hours................Emma's asleep in bed.......I check her blood sugar like I have a million zillion times before and the meter tells me that she is "high".........that means that it is so high that the meter can not measure the exact number anymore. To say my stomach dropped through the floor would be the understatement of the century. I immediately knew that it was the site. I knew that I should have listened to my damn first instinct...my gut feeling...I should have just changed it when I realized that it felt weird...wrong...off...when I changed it originally. But I didn't. I ignored that voice.
So, I had to wake her up, bring her downstairs, and change it again. I had to give her an injection in the stomach....for the first time in nearly a year. She was crying uncontrollably because her body was bogged down with too much sugar in her blood...she had been abruptly woken up....and stabbed in the stomach with a needle...and told that she had to endure yet another site change.
We did it. She laid on the couch crying...whimpering....telling me that she was upset, scared, worried, angry...........a whole mix of emotions. She felt like she was dying of thirst. She felt all of these horrible feelings.....because of me..........because of my error.
I fucked up.
I pulled out the old site and discovered the canula was bent at a 90 degree angle.
She had gone hours without getting ANY insulin at all.
because of me.........because of my error.....because I must have hit muscle when I changed it earlier.
I know, i know i know......shit happens.......mistakes happen.....i'm not perfect.......none of us are.
but as I held my baby girl in my arms and dried her tears.....tried to comfort her........using the most basic of my Mom skills........comfort my upset child............I sat there and wallowed in the fact that this whole situation we were stuck in was because of me..........because of my error.
I hate diabetes. I hate it with a red hot firey passion. I hate it with every single tiny fiber of my being. I hate what it does to my baby. I hate that I have to carry around this bullshit......this pressure.......this immense unbearable pressure. I hate it. It's not fair and I hate it.
I just wish it was easy. Not even easy so much....but just EASIER. I don't want to be in this club anymore. I love my D-Mom friends like they are my own sisters...........i Love their kids.......but I don't want to be in this club anymore. I want to take my baby......scoop her up in my arms and run........just get the hell out of here and outrun diabetes........beat it......get away from it......I just can't carry it around with me anymore.
It's too much pressure and I am not strong enough anymore.........diabetes has beaten me down day after friggin day and i just don't want to do it anymore. I am a good person. My child is an AMAZING person. We didnt ask for this. we didnt sign up for this. We didnt do anything to cause this.
So, why....................................................
why did it choose us................................
why did we have to be the ones to do this...................
why did i have to cradle my 8 year old baby in my arms tonight and rock her....try to comfort her....she wasnt sick....she didnt have the flu........she was caught in an overwhelming moment of despair with this disease.....................
all because of her Mom
Do you want to know what its like? Do you REALLY want to know?
Imagine explaining to your sobbing child that YOU are the reason why they feel like this and the reason why they are having to deal with this moment of insanity.
That is what it's like. How in the hell can one ever be ok with having a conversation like that. How in the hell can you live day after day walking on that tightrope...carrying that weight.....trying to find the balance and make it to the end.........all while having faith that there will actually BE an end.
How???? I've been trying to do it for 4 years now and tonight I feel like I am back at square one.
Do not pass go.....
do not collect $200..........
do not expect to ever get out with your sanity.......
just keep walking that line.