On the weekend in Ottawa, I met up with Catherine, our Goddaughter and her son Aaron.  It was a short visit, as we were doing the rounds on visiting our families, something we don't do that often, even though Ottawa is only a 2 hour drive.  Weekends are precious for us working stiffs, so getting away can be difficult as I'm sure you all can relate to.

Anyway, I think the best part of the weekend, was seeing Aaron!  He got diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 6, and at the time I had thought, "Oh no, why him?".  The thing is though, after seeing him, he reminds me much of myself as a youngster, just a kid full of energy and a zest for life (he's learning to snow board this winter).  I almost felt like I was talking to my twin, but in male form, it was hilarious, especially when we both found out we enjoyed dipping our pretzels in mustard.

His Mum is amazing, in raising him up the way he is, and along with help from CHEO (Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario).  They both have so much knowledge in how to handle diabetes, and even for Catherine like it did for my family, the diabetic way of eating has rubbed off on her.  Aaron and I got to talking about carbs, and when I told him the storyof my meeting up with some Type 2 diabetics at a CDA meeting a few weeks ago who insisted that cookies made with "no sugar" meant they had no carbs, so I didn't need any insulin to eat them, he had a good laugh. 

Everything has some form of carbs in it we both agreed!  I told him how much educating I was going to have with some of the diabetics in the WIDA (West Island Diabetes Association) that I'll be President of beginning in January 2010.   I told Aaron that these diabetics felt that a blood sugar in the morning of 8-12 mmol/l (144-216 mg/dl) was good, and that my 4-6 mmol/l (72-108 mg/dl) was just too low, I just about screamed at them, but held my cool. Of course, they told me, their doctors say that this blood sugar reading is fine. My response was that their doctors lived in the Stone Ages, and I don't think they quite took that in sad to say. It makes me wonder, what the heck are endos/GP's being told, in order to educate their diabetic patients in taking control of their diabetes, and avoiding complications from high blood sugars?  Eeech!!!  Out of this conversation, with a 10 year old remember, he told me, that being a kid, he couldn't keep his blood sugars as low as I do, and I agreed with him on that, with all the energy kids expend out.  All I can say is, I never thought I'd be discussing this type of thing with another diabetic of such a young age.  I only started to really become better educated in the diabetes area about 10 years ago, and I'm still learning!  I should have come to Aaron for advice earlier  <lol>!

So, on closing, can you tell that I'm really proud of Aaron, and how much he knows about taking care of his diabetes?  Even better, he's going to be going onto an insulin pump, thru' CHEO soon.  Each month 4 diabetic children are entered into the pumping program, which the province of Ontario now has for ALL diabetics.  Imagine, if all provinces/states/countries had this program, so that insulin dependent diabetics could be on insulin pumps, paid for by their government!  Need I say any more, with my having better control of my diabetes since going on the pump 2 years ago (prepump - A1C of 7% - pumping - under 6%).