Most of you know that Nate starts kindergarten this year.  I've known it was coming and made all of the preparations I know to make.  Last week I was overly stressed about completing Nate's 504 meeting and training the staff on how to care for him.  I was literally in tears for days and poured my heart out to my friend, Shay.  I told her how hard it is to navigate all of this alone and that I was feeling completely overwhelmed.  Not many friends understand, really understand what it takes to care for Nate.  Truthfully, only another parent with a T1 child can know the stress and fear that I have about sending Nate to school and trusting that someone else will keep him alive.

The next morning as I prepared for my meetings and got cleaned up for the day I heard the front door open and in walked Shay!  She came over to go with me to the training and to the 504 meetings for both Sophie and Nate.  I had been quietly crying that morning and was seriously thinking to myself --- I just cannot do this -- is it too late to look into homeschooling?  I know Shay would do anything for me, Ian and for my children but I was blown away by this seemingly small gesture.  Having someone by your side during a difficult time always makes it a bit easier and this was no exception.

She stayed with me through the training and the 504 meetings which lasted over 3 hours all together.  The training went great and I'm feeling good about our school nurse and her back up which is the office manager (whose son happens to have T1).  In the 504 meeting we met with the nurse, the VP, the school counselor, the PE coach (also the head of all specials teachers), both of Sophie's teachers and Nate's kinder teacher.  It was almost like we were old friends! They wanted to know all about Nate and Sophie, both of their diagnosis stories, but mostly they wanted to know what they needed to know and what they needed to do to keep them both safe and healthy.  We laughed, we cried and we put plans in place.  Shay chimed in and gave her opinion and most importantly helped me keep my composure in a very important yet emotional meeting.

Shay knows what I do for all of my babies, she knows I don't sleep, she knows about Crohn's and diabetes and she knows how passionate I am about both.  She's done research on her own about T1 and CD and is pretty knowledgeable but I think even she was emotionally exhausted after the training and meetings.  She now has even more of an understanding of how much has to be done to prepare a school to keep both of these sweet babies safe.

I'm so lucky to have Shay in my life!

On Friday she posted the following message to me on FB:

That seems like a million years ago.

It's done.
I'm divorced.
It was awful.

I can't even blog about it --- it was that bad.
People change.
I don't even know him anymore.

It doesn't matter now.

I'm free.
I'm happy.
I smile a lot.

The children are fine.
They smile a lot too.
They are totally amazing.


The children and I moved out of our home last November and moved in with my parents for a short time.  I could not appreciate them more for allowing us to invade their home with our craziness.  We are beyond blessed to have them.

In January we moved out and moved forward.  We have a wonderful new life now.  I won't pretend it hasn't been hard at times. There are certainly challenges.   There are so many adjustments.  The kids had to change schools, make new friends and move to a new city. You know what, except for the school part - I had to do that too.  Trying to make new friends at 40 kind of blows!

I was left with a mountain of debt, no house, and a gigantic IRS lien and no job.  My credit was better so nearly everything was in my name and X decided to let me keep all the debt.
Thank you, X!

I'm completely starting over at the fabulous age of FORTY!

Deep breath - I can do this.  Oh hell yes - - - I am doing this.

Nate still has diabetes.  Sophie still has Crohn's.  Emma is still the best big sister ever.  That stuff hasn't changed.  I will continue to blog about the ups and downs of living with Crohn's and Diabetes, vent about the frustrations and tell a few funny stories along the way.

Oh ya . . . I have some news.

I met someone.

He's pretty special.
He makes my heart happy.
He is completely amazing!





Actually, I've known him for over 20 years (ok, 25 to be exact).


He's been a friend through thick and thin.
He's seen me through all of my ups and downs.
He loves my crazy minis and has embraced them as his own.


When something is right, really right . . . you know it.  As our friendship developed into something more we both felt it.  It just felt so right.  There were times that we both tried to deny it but everything kept leading us back to each other.  You can't turn off or deny something so strong.






So here we are both of us starting over again together.

It is fun.
It is challenging.
It is completely amazing.

I love it.
I love him.
I love my life.

His name is . . . . Ian.  Typing that made me smile.

Ian has 2 nieces that have Type 1 (Hi Krysta and Samantha!!)
He has totally embraced life with diabetes and Crohn's amd shows absolutely no fear of either one.

He's mastered Type 1, Pod changes, and is able to recognize highs and lows in Nate.  They are best buds!!

He was there last year when Sophie was in the hospital.
He visits her during her Remicade infusions

She thinks he's pretty special:



We all think he's pretty special.

OK, OK . . . enough gushing over Ian.
I just wanted to introduce my readers to Ian and his sweet, precious girls, Lexi and London.
They will all be popping up in the blog from time to time so I thought an explanation was in order.

If we're friends on Facebook this is all old news to you so please feel free to disregard.  :)

Nate starting podding with the new, smaller Omnipod 6 weeks ago and although I don't know if I would say it was worth the wait (3.5 years for us) I am certainly enjoying most of the new features!

Of course, we received the pods the day before we left on vacation but no PDM.  I was less than thrilled! And obviously while we were on vacation our PDM malfunctioned. I had a mild panic attack.

All in all it tuned out fine and as soon as we got back I slapped the smaller pod on and we haven't looked back!   Nate couldn't care less about the size or any of the other features but I am quite happy with it.  I won't do a review here as I've read many others on different blogs

The one thing that I did struggle with is the Insulin on Board (IOB) feature.  I don't like it.  We went from MDI to the pod so I have never had the IOB calculated for me for meal boluses.  Nate stayed high for days! ---- I wish there was a way to turn it off.  I changed a few settings including insulin duration and have found ways to work around it so we are no longer dealing with IOB issues.  To be honest, I often don't use the bg to calculate the bolus because I don't want the IOB in the next bolus or correction. Nate is a snacker, he eats all day long so when it calculates his IOB it just doesn't give him enough insulin.  I'm sure there is a better way to work this out so if you have suggestions I am happy to hear them.  Current;y, this is what is working for us. YDMV.





Could Insulet have handled the switch over for existing customers better ---- Oh my stars, YES!

But at the end of the day we have the new system and I'm very pleased.


I just wanted to let everyone know that we did finally get the smaller pod and all is right in my our diabetic world again!