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Oh Yeah! I have come up with a delicious and diabetic-friendly recipe. I'm sure there will be many more to follow. When you bake in 3 pans and do 11 slices each, they're only about 12.5 carbs a slice (or 14 carbs if you only do 10 slices each). And a little slice of heaven they are too.
Ingredients:
1/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
1/4 c. natural unsweetened applesauce
1/4 c. veg. oil
1/4 c. sour cream
3/4 c. white sugar
1 c. Splenda Granulated
5 bananas (mashed well before adding).
3 eggs
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 c. Whole Wheat flour
1 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 c. ground flax seeds
1 c. mini-chips (semi-sweet)
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350, and spray 3 bread pans with "cooking spray with flour" (Baker's Joy or Crisco)
2) Mix butter, applesauce, sour cream and oil well. Add sugars and beat for a minute or two. Add eggs, bananas, and vanilla. Then add flours and baking soda, powder and salt. Don't over-mix at this point. Stir in mini-chips and nuts. Pour in even amounts into the pans and bake for 35-45 minutes until golden and toothpick comes out clean.
Mmmmm....
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Did I Mention?
I think I forgot to mention in recent posts that Sophia's A1C was 6.3 last time. That's a great number! It was 8.9 when diagnosed, and the desired range for avoiding long-term body damage is between 5 and 7. So, I felt a sigh of relief that the ups and downs weren't as awful as I'd fretted they could be.
I try not to over-analyze every number, but when I'm the one who's in charge of keeping her from suffering from the side-effects of diabetes, I do feel responsible when her numbers are off.
I talked to a couple people from the clinic this week. They feel her current weird numbers are two things: One, she's going through a growth spurt, which can throw things off. Two, she's starting to show more rebounding.
What in the world does that mean, we all wonder???
Well, apparently as the pancreas is closer to fully calling it quits, it stops sending the right messages, and whenever her sugar drops below 70 the liver starts spitting out sugar. Since it's not getting messages from the pancreas, it doesn't know when to stop. Thus her numbers go from 45 to 465 in a matter of an hour or two. It's good to have an explanation and not feel so so much guilt. But, I can't help but wonder what this means. Will she always vacillate wildly like this? That feels so awful in her body. And it's awful to observe. I feel powerless.
Tear, tear...
Sniff, sniff...
Sigh.
She and I have had some sweet moments lately though. Lots of snuggles when we're trying to get her to come up or down. She has a beautiful soul, that girl.
I recently had one of those really bad days where the sad feelings were taking over. I did one of those things we probably all have done in our lifetimes, and questioned whether God really existed. Sorry, I hope that doesn't sound ridiculous to some. I said, "I don't mean to test You, but I really need to know that you care about my situation. I need you to give me a scripture that spells it out for me."
I laughed at myself afterword. This is why: I felt led to turn to Psalms.
First verse I see in Psalms:
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:5
I try not to over-analyze every number, but when I'm the one who's in charge of keeping her from suffering from the side-effects of diabetes, I do feel responsible when her numbers are off.
I talked to a couple people from the clinic this week. They feel her current weird numbers are two things: One, she's going through a growth spurt, which can throw things off. Two, she's starting to show more rebounding.
What in the world does that mean, we all wonder???
Well, apparently as the pancreas is closer to fully calling it quits, it stops sending the right messages, and whenever her sugar drops below 70 the liver starts spitting out sugar. Since it's not getting messages from the pancreas, it doesn't know when to stop. Thus her numbers go from 45 to 465 in a matter of an hour or two. It's good to have an explanation and not feel so so much guilt. But, I can't help but wonder what this means. Will she always vacillate wildly like this? That feels so awful in her body. And it's awful to observe. I feel powerless.
Tear, tear...
Sniff, sniff...
Sigh.
She and I have had some sweet moments lately though. Lots of snuggles when we're trying to get her to come up or down. She has a beautiful soul, that girl.
I recently had one of those really bad days where the sad feelings were taking over. I did one of those things we probably all have done in our lifetimes, and questioned whether God really existed. Sorry, I hope that doesn't sound ridiculous to some. I said, "I don't mean to test You, but I really need to know that you care about my situation. I need you to give me a scripture that spells it out for me."
I laughed at myself afterword. This is why: I felt led to turn to Psalms.
First verse I see in Psalms:
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:5
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Attitude Adjustment Needed, or Maybe Just Chocolate
As an addendum to last night's post...ugh! So, like I was saying about the unpredictable nature of this disease, she was low most of the day yesterday, and continued to go low after given a snack of milk and animal crackers to bring her up. So, I gave her juice and 2 crackers with peanut butter (20 carbs...more fast-acting with the juice). She was 115 when she went to bed, and since she had been low all day, we decided to check her in the middle of the night. We tested at 12:30, and she was 465!!
Sigh...
So, she gets a shot in the middle of the night. Thank the Lord, I was able to wake her up enough to make some jokes with her and get her to understand that she needed to test and get a shot, without food to accompany. I said, "Can you imagine any other 5 year-old's getting up in the middle of the night and pricking their finger and getting a shot? You're a tough cookie!" She laughed.
I went to bed sad and confused. The corrections are just not easy to figure out. I am waiting for the Diabetes Center to call me and discuss the craziness of it all, so I can figure out if it was just a fluke of a day, or if I did something wrong with the insulin/carbs, etc.
We've had a super-busy week with errands, activities, doctor's appointments, parties, etc. So, I was looking forward to today with nothing to do and I could catch up the house. I woke up with the beginnings of a virus, and Norah and Jossie have been sick with one for over a week, and Sophia thought she was going to puke.
Waaaaaaaaa!!
Well, I wouldn't be sad if anyone just showed up at my door with Thin Mint cookies or Dark Chocolate truffles from Whole Foods.
Is that bad?
Oh well. We did have the rare pleasure of big soft snow-flakes falling today. Norah was THRILLED!! She calls it Gnow. We put on coats and hats and went outside and caught flakes on our tongues, and danced, and Sophia and Jossie had a fun make-believe world going, and we made a hop-scotch and all jumped. Then the yellow snot was all over their faces, and Momma had to make the call...Time to go in!!
Here are a few pics from today.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Highs and Lows
I think I could post one with that title every week.
Today it's not as much the emotional highs and lows as it is the physical ones she experiences. It's been a weird day. For the last week or so she's had a lot of numbers over 200 and 300. I started feeling like I wasn't paying enough attention and wasn't giving her enough insulin. So this week has been better, but today she went low (below 70) like 5 times! Every time requires extra carbs to bring her back up, and sometimes she'd continue to go lower. It's so dang confusing. Sometimes I give her like 10 carbs to correct a low and she'll shoot up over 200. Tonight I gave her 15 carbs and she dropped 20 more points. So, I had to give her 20 more carbs, and it brought her up to 115, which is high enough to send her to bed. However, not high enough for us to sleep all night without worrying. So, we get to set an alarm, or just go to bed really late on a night when we're already totally exhausted, and test her blood sugar again. That's never fun, as she usually can't wake up enough to put up with it and gets really angry, screams, cries, runs away from us, etc. Then when you ask her about it in the morning, she'll say, "Oh, you tested me last night?"
Are you serious? I'm thinking...
Most of the time we go through our days and nights with a lot of peace. Then there are days like today when we're reminded how unpredictable and very serious this disease is for her.
Yesterday I went to a coffee-talk with other moms of diabetics. There is also a young woman there who has Type I and works for JDRF. We had just gone to our first pump class, so I had a lot of questions for them about the different ones and which ones they were on. They also helped me feel like Sophia's sometimes irradic behavior is very normal. I met another mom with a kindergartener who said her daughter does very similar things. We talked about getting the girls together to play. I think it would do Sophie a world of good to meet another girl her age, plus this girl has a pump. So she could see what it's like.
The moms also helped me get a better understanding of how truly awful she feels a good portion of the time still. The woman with Type 1 gave some great descriptors for how it feels. Before her diagnosis, she was hanging out in the highs all of the time, so she was tired, and thirsty, and cranky. But now she vascilates between the highs and lows and feels those swings, and feels completely yucky on either end. They said that at as high as 250 (which she's often at) her blood is as thick as corn syrup and it feels like walking in sand. At the lows (below 70) it feels like that shaky, hungry, irrational feeling we get, except MUCH worse and more intense, often with sweating. Darn. Who wants to feel that way? It really stinks to think of her as feeling that way most of the time and trying to be a normal kid too.
It helped me have more compassion for her again. I've moved on to trying to be normal through all of this, and honestly have forgotten that she still feels bad, and hasn't necessarily just gotten used to the yucky feelings and can ignore them. At the same time, it really is confusing and a bit frustrating to know how to approach this information in the way of parenting. It's like, I still have to teach her that disrespectful or aggressive behavior is unacceptable in our house, yet, I need to try to get a larger measure of grace and more creative techniques for when she's high or low. I want her to cope, and feel like she's capable of making good choices. But, it's not as black and white as I'd like for it to be.
We'll be thinking on this one for a while....
Today it's not as much the emotional highs and lows as it is the physical ones she experiences. It's been a weird day. For the last week or so she's had a lot of numbers over 200 and 300. I started feeling like I wasn't paying enough attention and wasn't giving her enough insulin. So this week has been better, but today she went low (below 70) like 5 times! Every time requires extra carbs to bring her back up, and sometimes she'd continue to go lower. It's so dang confusing. Sometimes I give her like 10 carbs to correct a low and she'll shoot up over 200. Tonight I gave her 15 carbs and she dropped 20 more points. So, I had to give her 20 more carbs, and it brought her up to 115, which is high enough to send her to bed. However, not high enough for us to sleep all night without worrying. So, we get to set an alarm, or just go to bed really late on a night when we're already totally exhausted, and test her blood sugar again. That's never fun, as she usually can't wake up enough to put up with it and gets really angry, screams, cries, runs away from us, etc. Then when you ask her about it in the morning, she'll say, "Oh, you tested me last night?"
Are you serious? I'm thinking...
Most of the time we go through our days and nights with a lot of peace. Then there are days like today when we're reminded how unpredictable and very serious this disease is for her.
Yesterday I went to a coffee-talk with other moms of diabetics. There is also a young woman there who has Type I and works for JDRF. We had just gone to our first pump class, so I had a lot of questions for them about the different ones and which ones they were on. They also helped me feel like Sophia's sometimes irradic behavior is very normal. I met another mom with a kindergartener who said her daughter does very similar things. We talked about getting the girls together to play. I think it would do Sophie a world of good to meet another girl her age, plus this girl has a pump. So she could see what it's like.
The moms also helped me get a better understanding of how truly awful she feels a good portion of the time still. The woman with Type 1 gave some great descriptors for how it feels. Before her diagnosis, she was hanging out in the highs all of the time, so she was tired, and thirsty, and cranky. But now she vascilates between the highs and lows and feels those swings, and feels completely yucky on either end. They said that at as high as 250 (which she's often at) her blood is as thick as corn syrup and it feels like walking in sand. At the lows (below 70) it feels like that shaky, hungry, irrational feeling we get, except MUCH worse and more intense, often with sweating. Darn. Who wants to feel that way? It really stinks to think of her as feeling that way most of the time and trying to be a normal kid too.
It helped me have more compassion for her again. I've moved on to trying to be normal through all of this, and honestly have forgotten that she still feels bad, and hasn't necessarily just gotten used to the yucky feelings and can ignore them. At the same time, it really is confusing and a bit frustrating to know how to approach this information in the way of parenting. It's like, I still have to teach her that disrespectful or aggressive behavior is unacceptable in our house, yet, I need to try to get a larger measure of grace and more creative techniques for when she's high or low. I want her to cope, and feel like she's capable of making good choices. But, it's not as black and white as I'd like for it to be.
We'll be thinking on this one for a while....
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