You dirty rat

Sometimes diabetes is a rat bastard. You just need to learn to accept that fact and deal with it and figure out how to move on. People tell me all the time....it's just a number....just one number....deal with it and just move on to the next one. I tell myself the same thing all the time actually. However when you have been dealing with continuous lows that occur at the same time of day every day for going on the 3rd week now....and you have lowered her insulin dosages day after day after day to try and stop those lows...........well, it gets a little hard to remember that motto...it's NOT just a number...it's NOT just one occurance...one number...one low that you can deal with and move on to the next one. It keeps happening and it gets to the point of feeling like it is mocking you. It feels like you are failing. It feels like no matter what you do, it is not going to make any difference at all. It feels like you might as well just bang your useless head against the wall.
I try to be positive. I try to break it down and look at it as just one number...really I do.  It's exhausting though. It's exhausting and it makes me want to curl up in the corner and wave the white flag of defeat and surrender....I give....you win diabetes....I'm not smart enough obviously and I will never get this figured out. I think one of the most frustrating things of all is the knowledge that I WILL eventually figure it out...I will do it...I just have to be patient...I just have to keep plugging along and do it...every day...every single frustrating moment....I just have to keep doing it.
It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't live this life what it feels like to drop your kid back off at school after lunch and know that they are low....know that you have shut her pump off for a while and given her extra carbs to bring it back up....but she's still teetering on the edge of that low. It's hard to explain to them and make them see that diabetes is a serious thing....a low blood sugar is a serious thing. it's hard to make them understand that when i kiss her goodbye and leave her on the playground for lunch recess...that it feels like a piece of my heart has been ripped out and in it's place there is an empty hole of fear....fear that her blood sugar will keep dropping...fear that she will pass out on the playground...fear that the playground supervisor will be distracted with the younger kids crying or the older kids fighting and not see my baby lying there in the grass convulsing from a seizure caused by a low blood sugar....fear that Emma will be so confused and so lost because that low blood sugar causes her thinking to become fuzzy and she won't know to speak up and tell someone that she is feeling that way....and then it will be too late and i will get that phone call to tell me she is on her way to the hospital...........because she is low........and because schools here in Ontario are not allowed to administer a glucagon shot to my child in an emergency low blood sugar situation. They aren't allowed to give her that life-saving shot....and yet they have no problems being able to give an epi-pen shot to a child with allergies. My diabetic child is on her own out there. She is 8 years old and on her own in the big bad world.....and it kills me.
It is a very real and very traumatic fear to walk around with everyday. After 4 years of living this d-life, I have gotten quite good at compartmentalizing that fear....stuffing it in a little box and shoving it way down deep....slapping a smile on my face and laughing as i go about my day. But there are still days like today, where i feel like I am Alice falling down the rabbit hole....grasping at the air around me and searching for some kind of hold on it....some kind of hope....some kind of real and honest belief that i will figure this out....i will do it. I WILL FIGURE IT OUT! I have to. She needs me to. I need to stop....breathe....and just do it.