The Boss'

Let’s crank up the trusty ole’ time machine and take a peek back at the last decade, shall we?

2000 An exciting year to be sure! While on vacation in Michigan, Lindy went into labor prematurely. The fine folks at Spectrum Health managed to postpone the delivery for two weeks, so I had plenty of time to get to Michigan from Colorado. In June, Benny is born…10 weeks early, but otherwise in fine condition. He stayed in the hospital for a few weeks, but the folks at Spectrum got him off to a great start. In January, I was let go from AdvanceWare and started working for PeakOne in Littleton, Colorado, creating installation packages for their software. AdvanceWare and PeakOne mark my first pure programming jobs. I leave the dream of working as an industrial designer behind me. However, my training as an industrial designer makes me incredibly handy around the house.

2001 In April of 2001, we made the move from Denver, Colorado, to Holland, Michigan. It was hard to leave so many great friends behind in Denver, but we felt like all signs were pointing us toward West Michigan as home base, and we have not regretted the decision. We have, however, missed the abundant sunshine of Colorado. Makes me tear up a little bit just to think about it.

2002 We added a dog to our family. Woody the boxer came to live with us on Father’s day weekend. He has been the bane of my existence ever since. Lindy became licensed to provide daycare in our home. We soon had a house full of other people’s kids, and we used her income to pay off an auto loan, among other things.

2003 Emma turned 5 and learned to ride a two wheeler on the same day. Emma goes to preschool, and we begin to toy with the idea of home schooling. We make the transition to digital photography, and have probably taken 10,000+ photos in the last six years, with one major loss of data. The summer of 2008 is gone forever.

2004 In July, Grace is born! It’s hard to believe that four years passed between Ben and Grace being born. The years of only having two kids are such a distant memory at this point. A miscarriage or two in the intervening years is to blame for the 4 year gap. We officially keep Emma home and begin our home schooling odyssey.

2005 I begin recording all of our adventures on this very blog, thebossfamily.com. Been doing it ever since.

2006 In May, Anna is born! In June, just before he turned six, Ben was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. His diagnosis rocks us back on our heels a bit, but we continue to fight the good fight. Since June of ‘06, Ben has poked his fingers to check his blood glucose level approximately 6,000 times. It hurts every time. In October, we took a family vacation to Colorado. Ben begins his more formal home education, and it seems a good fit for him as well.

2007 In May, we move to an old farm house in Bentheim from our suburban house in Holland. In October, Jack Allen is born! We fully embrace the rural/homeschooling lifestyle, and we don’t look back.

2008 We settle in at our new house, while the economy begins to completely unwind. Once again, we’ve bought a house and prices immediately begin to fall.

2009 In March, the company I work for gave us every other Friday off…Yay! Except that our pay was also cut by 10%. Boo! In April, Will Daniel is born! Also in April, we got 13 chickens and two pigs for our little farm. We take a shot at our first garden. We learn a lot. In July, our whole family stood in stunned silence as the butcher came in and put an end to our two pigs, right there on our lawn in front of God and everybody. They now reside in our freezer.

What jumps out at me when examining the above list, is the fact that we added five kids to our family in the past 10 years. I can also see that for Lindy and me, our parenting and family philosophies have changed a lot. We feel like we’ve really turned our hearts toward home and tried to resist a lot of what the world tells us is worthwhile.

It’s hard to imagine what the next 10 years will bring. In a decade, I’ll have a 21 year old daughter! Yikes! I should probably start saving for the wedding.

Strange things have been going on with Ben’s blood glucose numbers for the last week or so. He’s tending to be very low, which is something we haven’t had to deal with in a long time. Last week he was sick with some sort of stomach bug, and ever since he’s been battling lows. I sent his insulin pump data to his endo yesterday and they’re recommending that we change his carb coverage for the time being. It seems that he’s not absorbing carbs in the same way. Maybe it’s some lingering effect of the stomach bug. To avoid any severe lows, we’re going through a ton of test strips. I’m checking him before I go to bed, and again around 2 am.

In other medical numbers related news, Lindy will be 30 weeks along this Friday. We’re grateful that she has been able to carry the baby this long, and we’re praying that she can make it at least one more month. 34 weeks would be great. The family is adapting to Lindy’s reduced activity pretty well. If she gets put on strict bed rest, things will be much harder, but for the time being she is just taking it easy…not lifting the kids, lugging laundry baskets, etc. She puts her feet up whenever possible.

At Ben’s last appointment with his diabetes doc, they recommended using the front/side of his thigh for his insulin pump infusion site. This made Ben very nervous because we have had some bad experiences using leg sites. He complains that when the site is inserted, it stings really bad. He has no such problems with the butt cheek sites, so he prefers them. I raised this concern with the nurse, and she suggested using ice to numb the area. We’ve modified this slightly and we now use a piece of vacuum packed, frozen meat that we’ve had in the freezer for about 6 years. It thaws slightly while Ben holds it on his leg, but we toss it right back in the freezer for the next site change. It seems to work pretty well, and we’ve used his legs for the last few site changes. This is a good thing because it gives his butt cheeks a little bit of a break…if a site is used too often, scar tissue can build up and the insulin can have a hard time absorbing into his body. Being able to use both legs gives us twice the sites, so each site gets more recovery time between uses.

Celebration season is almost at at end, here at the Boss house. From the end of June to mid July we celebrate many birthdays, and our anniversary, so it’s a busy time. We wrap things up this weekend with the extended Boss family getting together out here on the farm Sunday evening for a birthday party.

It’s been fun, celebrating birthday’s with the kids. They are growing up so fast, which will sound an awful lot like a cliche. I can’t believe I have a ten year old already. That must mean I’m getting really old as well. In a way, I think that having little kids around the house helps to keep a person young. You can only act so old when you still have to go home and play hide-n-seek with a two year old. Here’s a cheat sheet to refresh the memories of our long lost friends…

• Emma – 10
• Ben – 8
• Grace – 4
• Anna – 2
• Jack – 9 months

This week has been a busy one, with Lindy and 3 of the kids involved with VBS at our church. I’ve been meeting them at church for dinner and then taking Jack and Anna to bed on time. Needless to say, that makes for a very busy week. It’s a shame that something like VBS has to turn into a net loss for the family. I know that it’s great for kids who wouldn’t ordinarily be hearing the gospel, but it definitely stresses us out. Anyway, that’s just my opinion on that.

In diabetes news, Ben had his quarterly check up last Friday, and it was an eye-opener. It didn’t go well. His A1C number jumped up from 9.5 to 9.7. (We’re shooting for low 8’s) I was really disappointed with that result because I thought that we were doing better at managing his numbers. I was chastised for not communicating with the office between visits, and not sending pump data and meter downloads. We were also told that we cannot let Ben work the pump on his own. We need to enter every bolus, or at least confirm every bolus after he does it. There are studies that show that if a child is given responsibility for doing all that when they are too young, they will get burned out when they are a teenager, and their diabetes management will suffer. This will be tough for us, because Ben really likes to do that stuff himself. I can imagine him fighting us for control. However, this last appointment showed that that arrangement wasn’t working. On a positive note, the doctor made a number of changes to his pump settings and his numbers over the last week have been great. His best numbers in a long time. He had a couple of days in a row of nearly non-diabetic numbers. Hopefully that trend continues. I’m going to try harder to communicate with his office and get them the data they need to manage his numbers better.

That’s sort of a long winded wrap up of the last few weeks out at Boss farm. Coming up we have camping, cottage, and other fun summer time stuff, so stay tuned for that.

I haven’t posted any updates on the diabetes front in quite a while, so that is the task that I’ve assigned myself for today.

Managing Ben’s diabetes continues to be tricky. Partly this is a function of him just being a kid. He’s growing, so his insulin/carbohydrate ratio is always going to be in flux. And occasionally he will misbehave and have a snack without telling us, and without covering the carbs himself. Still, we are stumped by what seem to be bizarre stretches of very high BG levels. At his last checkup, his A1C was running around 9.5…higher than what we want it, but lower that the previous appointment. Currently, his 14 day BG average is around 200 mg/dl. That would equate to a A1C of roughly 8.5. We’d be thrilled if he were below 9 at his July appointment.

On a related note, Grace’s favorite thing to do lately is to pretend to check her BG. She carries an empty container of Ben’s test strips around, and is popping the container open every few minutes and squeezing an imaginary drop of blood onto an invisible test strip, which has been carefully inserted into her invisible meter. She will then happily announce a result. For some reason, she usually picks a number in the 300’s. 369, 358, 338, etc. I’m not sure what her fascination is with these particular numbers, but that’s what she chooses. We’ll say to her, "Gracie, that’s pretty high honey, are you sure you aren’t in the 100’s?" "No, I’m 358." She will sometimes announce that she feels "shaky", and that she needs to check herself. She breaks open the empty tube of test strips and begins the process all over again. At first I would tell her that she shouldn’t pretend to have diabetes…that it’s no fun…that it’s not something to joke about. I’ve given up on that though. I figure it gives her a connection to her brother’s diabetes, and helps her relate to what he goes through on a daily basis. Better than having a kid who doesn’t care at all about what is going on around her.

These diabetes posts may be tedious, but they are  great way for me to chronicle all of the changes that we’ve made/are making to Ben’s pump.

Ben had an appointment with his Endo during the week of Christmas…the 27th to be exact. It was an early trek to Grand Rapids for an 8:25 appointment. I felt like it was a bit of waste of time because when we finally got into the office, they told us that their computer was down and that they could not download his pump. Unfortunately, I had not downloaded recently either, so the only numbers that we had to go on were the last few days on his meter. Based on just those numbers, there was not a whole lot his doctor could do. She did make a small change in his afternoon basal, with instructions to download after a few days so that she could take a look at the results of that change.

One useful piece of information to come out of the visit was that we were able to get his latest A1C number…9.9. Now, that’s not particularly good, but it is down from his last appointment 2 months ago. The problem certainly seems to be in his basal rates, because his food coverage seems pretty good. If I overestimate his carbs at all, he goes low pretty quickly, so his carb ratios are fine, if not a little too aggressive.

We’ll see what they want to do after I get them some fresh data. They also suggested that we take an advanced pump class, that deals with sifting through all the data and being able to make our own adjustments to his pump. I guess that’s a good idea since we can’t depend on doctors forever.

This is a video that was posted over at TuDiabetes.com recently. They asked people with Type 1 to write a word on their hand describing their struggle with diabetes. The resulting video is pretty compelling. I can identify with many of the words that members came up with.

On another related note, I watched a fund raising video on YouTube the other day. It showed an enlarged finger print of a child with Type 1. The constant finger pokes visibly changed this individuals finger prints. It’s something that I hadn’t thought of before, but now that I look at Ben’s finger tips, I can see it happening.