Halloween for Diabetics. It's really scary

Holiday's are rough for diabetics, especially kids. Most type 1 diabetics are diagnosed fairly young and have to start dealing with some tough choices fairly early in life.

Doctors and parents are telling them they can be just like everyone else, but they fight with the fact that they aren't really.

When I was growing up there were no at home blood glucose tests or insulin pumps there were no plans for fast acting insulin with each meal.  You took one shot in the morning of an insulin that peaked several times throughout the day and designed a diet to eat when the insulin was peaking. At home Urine tests were supposed to tell you how you were doing. If you spilled too much sugar in your Urine you needed to eat less or take more insulin. It was a very inexact science.

This also meant that kids were not allowed any real sweets at all. Candy, Cake, Ice Cream, that was called cheating. I cheated a lot. I stopped doing Urine tests after about a year and without any way of really seeing what the food was doing to me ate a lot of the wrong things.

Mom and Dad tried to help. On Halloween they would buy my candy from me. Whatever I brought home we'd have a little auction and I would get paid to give up my haul. Of course money doesn't taste as good as that Three Musketeers or Reeses your sister is eating so I would find the stash and sneak it anyway. As I got a little older I learned that I didn't have to go find the stash, I just had to hold some of it back.

Halloween is still a hard time for me. So much chocolate sitting around the house and you think "oh one won't hurt that much." I end up using a lot more insulin this time of year. This will actually be my first Holiday Season with the Continuous Glucose Monitor. I'm anxious to see how that will change things

In today's world of carb counting, CGM's, insulin pumps and more exact dosing, I wonder what parents are doing to help their kids get through a Holiday where the main goal for everybody else is to see how much candy you can grab and eat.