I really think that the distance Alice got from the situation while on vacation with Helena helped her to see things more clearly. In the two weeks that she was gone, Kallie seemed to get even more used to the insulin pump and to her condition, and I was happy to discover that many of the things I’d gotten so used to eating over the years were good for her blood sugar levels.

That didn’t mean that it was all easy, though. She did have a few instances of moderate low blood sugar while Alice was away, and these left her feeling drained. They weren’t very hard to treat, though. I gave her a glucose tablet, which she started to refer to as “candy” since they apparently didn’t taste too bad, and then some food a little bit later. She was usually perfectly fine within half an hour or so.

I was really glad that she was adjusting so easily. Even when she had to go to the doctor to get blood drawn or something, she was never really bothered. We ate really healthily, and when Kallie would stay with any of the others, including my parents, she would never have any treats, calling them “bad food.” That worried me a little, since I didn’t want her having any issues with food and it was possible for diabetics to eat basically whatever they wanted given a little planning. The dieticians we saw told me that it was perfectly normal for her to think that way given her age, though. As she got older she’d grow out of that a little.

It was tougher for everyone else to get used to it than it was for Kallie. I was fine since I’d been eating healthy the great majority of my life, but it took quite some time before I was comfortable leaving her at Bette and Tina’s for the evening. They didn’t sit around and pig out on junk food or anything, but they did enjoy things that didn’t exactly fit into Kallie’s diet. Still, they were open to learning, as well as everyone else. Since a lot of her care was mostly nothing more than common sense, it wasn’t as tough as I’d thought it would be.