It’s Catholic Schools Week, and Little Brother’s school celebrated today with an ice-cream party for the kids. They do this every year. It’s a fun tradition.
But when you mix diabetics and ice cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles (not jimmies–sprinkles) it’s not an easy tradition.
We didn’t want Little Brother to have to say no to the ice cream. He can have a reasonable portion (and maybe even a little bit of the toppings), but in order to “cover” that with insulin, we need to know how much ice cream he’s going to have. And that involves measuring cups. 
I’m at the school, on average, a couple of hours a day. Today I couldn’t be there for the ice cream, so I had to do some of the homework ahead of time. I left our measuring cup, along with a list of the carb counts for the ice cream and toppings, with the nurse.
In the middle of all of that, I ran into one of the teachers, who is herself the parent of a diabetic (also diagnosed in grade school.) She gets it, and she has been very encouraging. Today she let me know that someone (and she didn’t mention names) was wondering why I was so worried about measuring the ice cream. She told me that she’d set them straight, telling them that because we’re new to this, we’re not ready to just “eyeball” portions yet–but we’ll get there.
I think I’d rather not have known this. I am in and out of the school, because my child is just not feeling confident enough to manage this without me. I am also a substitute teacher there. The whole faculty has seemed so supportive. And now, I guess, someone supports me to my face but judges me publicly behind my back.
Thanks for that.
I know I should be grateful that there is a teacher there who has my back. But all I can think about is how someone else in that school kicked me in the gut today.