i could blog about oliver losing part of his thumb.
i could blog about oliver feeding goldfish to pearl, washing it down with raspberry ice crystal light and then finishing her 'meal' with a big squirt of aquafresh kids.
i could blog about ben and his obsession with saying swear words or his fascination with ninjas and zombies. i could blog about pearl and how sweet her chunky thighs are and about her perfect eyelashes.
really, there are so many things...TOOOOoooo many things to blog about in my life. i think that is why i space out on it. i make mental notes, i totally need to blog about that...kel, write that shit down, girl!
and then it happens...something else...and i keep adding to my horrible memory, things to blog about. so when i do blog (because i am so seasoned at it) it is usually about something that cracks me up over and over again- or something that sits with me and weighs heavy on my heart.
i yelled at ben. i mean YELLED.
this past weekend we drove to pittsburgh for our diabetes walk. we go every year..we have too, it's for a cure. we'll keep walking until there is a cure...
we had such a great time with the small group of folks that joined us. i am still bitter about the ones who didn't join us, but that is another story. like my mom said, this is something that is important to ME, not them. i wish it wasn't so.
but regardless, we did have a GREAT time. we walked, we laughed, we ate amazing food at this new restaurant...and found an amazing little bakery with amazing little cuppie cakes.
after the walk, ben spent saturday night with his dad. the babies and i headed to washington, pa. we decided to spend an extra night and visit with ryan. he works so much, and gets to come home..never, so being able to squeak in an extra visit, is awesome. i'll skip out on all the nuttiness of hotel life, and get back to my point.
we had lunch on sunday at a ginormous chinese buffet (it was SO clean. it was weird) and of course ben didn't want to eat a darn thing. which, was fine-he'd had lunch with his dad, meme and grandma just about an hour or so earlier. then we walk in and he sees the endless rows of food.
chinese food is a cruel joke to a diabetic. there is NO way that you could ever accuartly JUDGE the carb count in a damn thing. luckily, i pride myself on being the walking 'calorie king' and can take an educated guess and be fairly right on. be jealous.
except when it comes to chinese. i can't seem to master the 3 bites of chicken on a stick, 1 and 3/4 bites of an egg roll, 7 lo mein noodles, just the cream cheese chunk of a cream cheese wonton and 3 fried dumplings swimming in dipping sauce...or the chocolate fondue fountain...or ice cream cone that all the 'cool' chinese restaurants have.
i guessed. horribly. but i didn't 'believe' it was horrible until we started on our drive home.
bee bo beep. bee bo beep.
i knew it was a matter of time before we would be getting the 'predicted low' alert...ben had been whiny about being hungry and that he couldn't believe that i wasn't going to buy him an ipod touch for his birthday and that his dad would let him do this and do that....and by now pearl had screamed enough to make the hair stand up on my arms and i just KNEW ben was going to be low.
476. whoa. what? wowza. WTF. that is NOT low. that is HIGH. holy bejesus high, actually.
and this is where it happened. i yelled. i screamed and i was PISSED.
i screamed at ben for eating an ice cream cone. i yelled at him for not picking more broccoli. i yelled at him because he needs to be aware of what he is eating because those choices are a matter of losing a finger or a foot. organ failure. death. i yelled at him...DO YOU WANT TO DIE BEN?! i yelled at him because he should know better by now and that diabetes is part of his life, like it or not and he HAS to get on the train to take care of himself or ELSE. i yelled at him and yelled and then i looked back. i looked into the back seat to see the tears of a scared little boy who kept saying 'i'm so sorry mom, i am sorry, please don't be mad at me'.
ben shouldn't know better. ben is my little boy. i should know better. ME. not my gorgeous, strong, courageous son. ME.
i yelled at him, through tears, because i FAILED. i made the bad carb counting mistake. not ben. i used ben as an outlet to MY frustration and i cried. ben is FIVE. ben is MY life and MY responsibility.
ben is a kid. ben is a kid. BEN IS 5. he didn't do ONE thing differently than any other child at a chinese restaurant. (except he ate a crawfish...what kid eats a crawfish at a chinese buffet?!).
i know i am a good mom. i am a GREAT mom, actually. i love my kids more than air. diabetes is just a hiccup that we have to man handle and put in its place. i am so much braver than that stupid D, but i'll tell ya. sometimes, it's hard. ben just happened to be part of one of my hard moments and man am I SORRY.
i spent the rest of the drive apologizing. telling ben how much i love him and that sometimes mommy goes a little spastic and even though i say horrible things-they aren't true. i assured him that he won't lose fingers or toes and i promised him that he isn't going to die.
i spent the rest of the trip telling ben all lies.
the only truth i told him was how much i loved him.
and god, that hurts.
i've been replaying that scene in my head since sunday afternoon. i can't shake it. i am an amazing D mom and regular mom. ben is an amazing kid with diabetes. we are a good pair in a life that just isn't fair. i PRAY that he will keep with him the education and knowledge of diabetes, so that when it IS his time to take control, he knows what to do. that he KNOWS to make the right choices so that those 'lies' don't come true.
as long as there is D, there is still time to donate and help make a difference.
www.jdrf.com
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