Tag: practice

Football Has Never Been This Cute Before

~ JodiLea

Ah Oh! My Grandma is coming out with this post!…

I will be cheering for a new team this year – The NU Junior Miners, 8 and under.  It is the team my granddaughter is on. That’s right, I said my granddaughter.

FirstDayOfPractice1

I was able to attend the very first team practice on July 25th. It was exciting and very suspenseful it turned out..

I swelled with pride to watch our Chloe doing those running in place “down-up” drills. Coach praised her and said she was the fastest and to keep up the good work. Every 10-15 minutes, coach sent them all “to the bench” which meant run over to your parents and drink some water.

HydratingAtPractice

The high temp that day was 100 degrees, and it was still HOT when practice began at 6:00 pm. I was shocked to find out that practice lasted for 2 full hours – An hour past bedtime for some of those kids!

It was nearly 7:00 pm when the first kid lost it.

One of the older boys ran off the field. His parents were sitting on the edge of the field we were on. The poor kid was shaking and crying so hard he could barely speak. When he was able to get some words out they conveyed desperation and panic.

I want to go home now!” “I can’t do this!”  “It’s too hard” “I’m going to quit!” The more his parents tried to calm him the more desperate he became. These kids have run hard, and doing exercises constantly (even for water breaks they had to run off the field then back again).

If an 8-year-old boy is destroyed by the first hour of practice, how the hell is a 6-year-old going to hold up?  Well, she lasted for another half-hour before losing her mind. Shaking, Sobbing and repeating what was becoming the mantra of the evening “I can’t do this!  It’s too hard.”

I was impressed how parents reacted to this situation. They were calm and supported of their children, but wanted them to stick it out for the entire practice. They wanted them to sit (off the field) and listen and watch the team drills. No one yelled at the coaches to tone it down. There were no riots or injuries (like those soccer people always seem to have) either.

Once my granddaughter was calm and caught her breath, she was still reluctant to get back in there. Until coach started them on her favorite drill.

“Oh look! They are doing the defensive drills,” my daughter says.

“OK – I’ll try again,” Miss 51 said. Although her lower lip trembled, and her eyes had tears left in them, she put on her “brave face”, waved to us as she ran back onto the field and got into line. After her turn, she would circle back and get into another line. She made me think of the Energizer bunny – she kept going and going and going.

She managed to make it through to the end, 8:05 according to my watch. I knew she would. FirstDayOnField

Her first game is this weekend, and I am so bummed I can’t go! I expect my  daughter to take video!!  Would it be too much to ask my Son-in-Law to call me during the game and give me a radio announcer’s version? I’m thinking, hey, he’s there watching it anyway, right?

OMG!  She even stands like a football player – isn’t that so cute?

♥  TTFN  ♥

Here’s Your Pump, Now Bond With It…

~ JodiLea ~ 3 Comments

Let me introduce you – to my little friend…

MyLittleFriendYesterday Maureen, the OmniPod trainer and Certified Diabetic Educator (CDE), and I opened the box shipped to me by Insulet™, with my OmniPod “start-up kit.”

Maureen showed me all the components and “we” programmed it to my doctor’s specifications, edited settings, and then,  attached my 1st Pod.  For two hours, she patiently showed me features, explained why I would use them and gave me a lot of information. (We also chatted about non-pump related stuff and shared a laugh or two.)

I won’t go into all the technical & medical details but basically this is how my “pump” works. I know you have been chomping at the bit to find out  😉

The Pod (shown above) is the insulin delivery system. Once attached to my stomach and activated, it acts as an artificial pancreas and deliver an amount of insulin that a normal pancreas would do.  Starting up a Pod is fairly simple – I will follow, step-by-step (lots of pictures) in the Quick Start Guide manual. There are a lot of steps and I do not want to miss any and ruin the Pod.

First I fill the Pod with insulin (a saline solution that we are pretending is insulin). Then I figure out where I want it to be on my body. I clean that place with alcohol pad, let it dry and then pull the paper off the adhesive tape (like you would a band-aid). The tape covers the bottom and sides of the Pod. It does not look like near enough tape to hold it on for 3-days, but it sticks well, so far.

Now, I can activate it. The PDM sends the information we programmed to the Pod. When that is accomplished the PDM tells me to hit “start” and the Pod will inject a needle with a cannula under my skin then pull the needle back, leaving the tube in. The injecting takes a few seconds to begin after pushing “start.”

This is the worse part. Waiting to be punctured. You know it’s going to happen, but since you are not doing it yourself, you don’t know exactly when it will go off.  Even though you are expecting it to happen, when it does happen it surprises you.

Yesterday, I squealed and jumped – almost falling over.  I got lucky and it didn’t hit a nerve, so the pain was nearly non-existent. I hope I get used to this step quickly!  I will be changing the Pod on Friday by myself. In fact, Maureen told me to “play” with and get to know the PDM. It has several menus and functions. Some I will use a lot, and some infrequently.

She will be teaching an in-depth class for two mornings next week. It’s then that I will go “live” with real insulin. God help me. So the more I “play” the more confident I will be when this happens. At least that’s what Maureen told me. Why would she lie?

Yes, this whole thing makes me nervous.

The Personal Diabetes Manager (PDM) is the “brains” for the Pod. (Shown below) It does the dose calculations after I give it my blood glucose level, and the amount of carbs I plan to eat for my meal/snack.  It shows me the values and asks me if I want that dose to be delivered. I tell it yes or no. I can edit the value the PDM suggests if I need to. I can’t enter special info to influence the calculation, such as, if I’m stressing out, and my blood glucose (BG) is going through the roof, no matter what I’m eating, I can increase the dose to cover it.

PDM-ZoomedOutMy PDM is displaying my current status when photo was taken. This means the time of the last BG test, meal insulin dose, and the insulin “on board.”  It also keeps track of when I will need to change the Pod unit.

In 3-days I have to deactivate the one I’m wearing now, and activate a new one in a different site than the previous one. I will just dispose of the old one. That blows my mind. The Pods are tossed away! They expire (no longer work) after 72-hours. This seemed very wasteful to me until I learned that the insulin being body temperature will start to “go bad” and not be dependable anymore. Then there is the need to give the skin a break from the injection site and adhesive, but putting a new Pod in a different place.  The PDM is really my pump. It controls the Pod via Bluetooth.

Basically, I have a remote-controlled pancreas now. How weird is that?  I’m already writing a list of things that will make my life easier using my little friend. Hubby has “homework” also. He is checking to make sure that I remember to take my real insulin injections. Very important job!

TTFN,  (Ta-Ta For Now)

   Jodi