A contest, a hospital and a birthday party....what a week!

Finally, I have found a few minutes to blog! This last week has been so insane, it defiantly has been a roller coaster ride for all of us. It all started the Thursday night before fathers day, my son Connor started vomiting late in the night. Our first thought was OMG we have to keep him away from Cara! Poor Connor, I remember the days when the kid that was sick was the kid that you were worried about. But since the "D" it is way more complicated then that. We were up all night with him.
On Friday I still had a very sick child, I got some wonderful news and I had time to see my oldest in a wonderful play at her school. A few weeks back I found a local news website todayswindsor.com and I entered a Fathers Day contest for my husband (but it was really for me). The winning prize was a new Kodak digital camera and a Kodak digital picture frame. As soon as I saw the prize I thought how great it would be to win the new camera since just a few weeks back my Sony camera stop working for no particular reason. I have never won anything, even as a kid, all the school raffles that I entered I never even came close. So you could imagine my excitement when I got the phone call on Friday afternoon that I WON!! So amazing, I thought that it was about time that something good happen to me. I felt like I had won a million dollars, I was so happy!! So they came to my house that night to drop off the prize and took a picture of me, Kylie and Cara. Chris (the real prize winner) was driving our oldest daughter Kailyn to her school's play, myself and my mother were attending later on that night. Kirstin was eating because they came right at dinner time to take the picture and she is the messiest eater ever, so she was not picture ready. Connor was still in bed sick, he was sick from the night before. After the hosts of the program took our pictures Kylie says "hey I know you from T.V. am I going to be famous too" It was so funny and cute!! After they left, myself and my mother went to Kailyn's school play which was adorable, I just wished that I had the new camera charged and ready for the play.
On Saturday morning Chris and I became very worried about Connor he was not able to keep anything down. Within 10 minutes of eating, drinking or any medication he would be running to the bathroom. We decided to bring him to the clinic, and we were told by the doctor to bring him to the E.R. because he had signs of dehydration. He ended up having a "virus" and it just needed to runs it course. He was very sick and we spent Saturday through Tuesday in the hospital. Almost all the nurses that walked into his room said " have you been here recently?" "YES" I said "in February for my 3 year old daughter who was diagnosed with T1". Five months, two different kids spending 4 days each in the hospital is just way too much! Connor however had a great time, once he started to feel better. He was playing WII and Xbox 360, he was painting and doing crafts, there was a magician on Monday that came to his room and a musical dual that came to his room on Tuesday, he also had mom and dad all to himself. He said "mom I love this place I feel like a king and they (nurses) are all my servants". He never wanted to go home, but finally on Tuesday afternoon we were able to go home. He missed his last week of school but his classmates made him get better soon cards that he loved. The best part is that none of my other kids got sick...Thank you God!! While all this was going on I had a mermaid birthday party to plan for my now little 5 year old kylie's 5th birthday on Saturday. These last 2 weeks has felt like a month and still so much more to do....

Today I was on Juvenation http://juvenation.org and someone was asking people their date of birth, date of diagnoses, skin type and place of birth. They were trying to see the link between low vitamin D exposure and Type 1 diabetes. This reminded me of an article that I had read a while ago.
It is titled Toddlers don't get enough vitamin D written by Tom Spears and it reads:
One-third of Canadian toddlers have too little vitamin D, a new Toronto test found a deficiency that puts - them at risk of a wide range of diseases later in life. "These are levels not seen in (American) toddlers outside of Alaska," said lead author Dr. Jonathon Maguire of the Hospital for Sick Children. That's a surprise because vitamin D comes largely from sunshire, and southern Ontario has stronger sunshine than the Arctic. "We're more similar to Alaska than to other American cities such as Boston. We have to ask why" Maguire said.. Too little vitamin D can lead to rickets, a bone deformity. That's uncommon in Canada today though cases do still persist, and Maguire says there's no reason to have any rickets at all. More importantly low vitamin D levels seem to lead to a variety of health problems later in life, ranging from cancer and multiple sclerosis (in adults) to Type 1 diabetes in children. The study began because doctors didn't know much about the vitamin levels in toddlers. "We have a fairly good idea what happens with infants. Infants are largely breastfed in Canada, and largely supplemented with vitamin D. But after they stop breastfeeding, they're switching to solid foods 'that probably don't contain much vitamin D," Maguire said.Levels of the vitamin in two year- olds are much lower than in infants in their first year of life, the study found. The levels tend to rise again in teenagers. No one knows the reason for certain. , Thirty-two per cent of the Toronto children were below the vitamin D level recommended by U.S. pediatric authorities; The Canadian level recommended for children is higher, meaning that. 82 per cent of the Toronto children were below that.

We did it!

This Sunday we attended our Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes fundraising event, I MADE MY GOAL of $2,500.00 and the We CARA Lot team raised more then $4,000.00 all together. The walks combine total was $115,000.00. WAY TO GO EVERYONE!!
All that I had wished and hoped for was accomplished. We had amazing weather, all my walkers seemed to really enjoy themselves, our T-shirts looked great, my kids had so much fun and behaved so well. I was really impressed, we only had one outburst from Cara, but of course it was during the group picture that she did NOT want to take. She decided to scream the whole time the picture was being taken, but at that point of the day I did not even care! It was so funny, we took the first picture and Cara was screaming her lungs out and the rest of the team had these great big nice perfect smiles on there faces. As the screaming continued the people around us started to look and probably think who the heck is that kid screaming..."what a brat". For the second and last picture (due to the screaming), my aunt yells out "now everybody scream"...the whole team starts to scream just like Cara and everyone began to laugh. A great moment!!

There were some things that I will do next year to make the walk go a little bit smoother, I have already started my list!lol I am a list person. Being our first walk I think that we did a great job and I'm very happy with the way everything turned out. All the stress and hard work paid off and it was soooo worth every minute!

WE NEED A CURE! :)

Miss Calculation

I'm so mad at myself!

First off our walk is tomorrow and I was trying to raise $2,500 for the We CARA Lot team and secondly I am not a math person.

So I have been doing all the fundraising and organizing for the We CARA Lot team and calculating my total donation amounts the whole time that I have been raising the money. Last night I was so excited that I reached my goal of $2,500 for the walk, but then my husband looked at the numbers. So it seems that I have missed calculated my total by $500. OMG I was so disappointed, I counted two $250 donations twice. I was so upset with myself and it got me really down and feeling like a total failure and I was ready to give up! My husband said we can do this, we can reach your goal. So I started sending out more emails and posted this on Facebook
"Last chance to donate to the We CARA Lot team!! I only need $000.00 more to get to my goal of $2,500.00....anyone? http://jdrfca.donordrive.com/team/wecaralot Thank you to everyone who has donated to us it really means a lot! xoxox" and every hour I would update it with the total amount that I needed. Now I only need $100....I hope I make it!! But I'm still very frustrated with my counting ability.

Busy week and many more to come...

These last few weeks have been very busy weeks for us with the Telus walk getting closer, family gatherings and two of our kids birthdays (that we have postponed the parties because we have been so busy). It has been non stop! The weekends have been jammed packed with so many events and will continue to be for a few weeks to come. Last weekend we attended my husbands family gathering on Saturday. It was really the first time that we, as a family with a T1 child left the security of our immediate surroundings (close to the house). We spent all afternoon until about 9:30pm there and boy, was it a lot of work. On top of making sure that all 6 kids were behaving like normal human beings and staying away from the busy road because of the lack of a fence. I was worried about what Cara was eating, how much she was eating and when she was eating, and trying to keep an eye on activity level. All while I was trying to catch up with a few family members that we have not seen for quite some time. All in all, everything went great! The
kids had an amazing time and it was really nice to see everyone again.

On Sunday we all went over to my sisters house for my fathers 59th birthday (sorry no pics). The kids were still really tired from the day before, so their behavior was not that great and we were kinda in a rush to get back home to get everyone to bed. When you are away from home you realize how organized and structured your life really is and how much you depend on it being so. It was a hard week-end with a lot of guessing carbs amounts and different eating times and eating all different types of foods. But we are not going to allow the "D" to keep us confined to a small safe space. It might be harder, but it is the only way to live and show Cara that she can do and go anywhere she wants to.

This week my team T-shirt came in a little to close for comfort but I cannot complain since they are being donated. They look very cute and Cara loves them. I tried to explain why we are doing the walk and raising money to Cara. When I told her it was for people that are trying to find a cure for her diabetes, my 3 year old said to me "no more blood sugar, no more insulin and no more doctors? I will be bran new!" She is just so cute some times :)

Our Telus walk is this Sunday the 14th at 8:30 in the morning. It will be a mad dash trying to get all 6 kids ready for the day, I'm sure we will forget a few things! I have spent my week trying to get donations close to my goal of $ 2,500, I am only $100 away. Boy, is it ever hard to get money from people in these economic times. Next year I am thinking that I will throw two events, one for the kids and one for adults and I will use the money donated from that to put towards the walk.
It really surprised me to see who the people were in my life that put themselves out and donated their time and or money towards the walk and who the others are that really did not want to have anything to do with it. It really was amazing, it caused me to rethink who my TRUE friends are... You think you know who the people are that you can depend on, but some people really surprise you!! For the good and the bad. So needless to say this week has been a very mind opening and very stressful week.

On top of every thing else, this week was the first time and hopefully the last we messed up the amount of night time insulin we were suppose to give to Cara. Half way through injecting Cara with her insulin my husband realized he was giving her the morning dose, not the dinner, which is about 3x more the amount. Everything was fine THANK GOD!! maybe because she has been sick with Lyme disease and her blood sugar has been running high, so she made it through the night with no problems. Speaking of the Lyme disease we have noticed in the last 2 weeks Cara's behavior is just out of control, she is hitting, yelling, throwing tantrums, taking things for people, saying very mean things to everyone and just not acting like herself. I just hope that this is because she is sick and not a new way for her to behave and get her own way. Ever since she has been diagnosed I have noticed a huge change in her behaviour and how she interacts with her siblings. This is a real stresser on my life in so many different ways...but that is a whole other blog! lol

Keep your fingers crossed for good weather on the 14th ( it looks like it will be beautiful) I have butterflies in my stomach, I'm just wanting every things to go great tomorrow and I want everyone to have a wonderful time.

Diabetes now at Play Time

Well it finally happened...Diabetes has entered into our barbie world. Yesterday afternoon all of "the girls"(Kylie & Cara) barbies developed type 1 diabetes. The barbies have started their strict life style change in amazingly good spirits lol. "The girls" were sending them to the doctors, giving them insulin shots and even remembering to check the barbies blood sugar at meal times. It was very cute to listen too, but a little sad that diabetes is such a major part of all of our lives that is has found it's way into the kids play time too. I do know that play is a great therapy for kids and maybe it will help Cara with dealing with all the changes in her life.

Does anyone know if Mattel has made "diabetes Barbie or Ken"? Cara would love one. If not I may contact them to share my ideas?

Side note: our Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes is this Sunday the 14th and I'm praying for good weather!! and a wonderful time!! The We CARA Lot team is 40 walkers strong and still collecting donations http://jdrfca.donordrive.com/team/wecaralot

A look at the We CARA Lot T-shirts

These are pictures of our We CARA Lot team T-shirt for the walk to cure diabetes on June 14th...YEAH!


THANK YOU SO MUCH VISTAPRINT!!































We would also like to thank our sponsors: Nguyen Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Center, Pilates at the Loft, The Solar Experts, Windsor ENERGY Experts and Advanced Home Services.

Now what...... Lyme Disease?

We have been very lucky with Cara and sicknesses since she has been diagnosed with T1. We have not had a sick day, a few runny noises here and there but nothing major and with 6 children that is amazing. Until NOW....
So about a week ago my husband was outside with our kids while I was gone to a friend's baby shower. While playing outside a neighbour noticed a bug (mosquito) on Cara's arm, my husband killed it. Cara went on playing the rest of that afternoon and night, everything seemed fine. It was only a few days later that we noticed a big red circular sore or bruise on her arm close to the same area that the mosquito had bit Cara. I asked my husband if he had seen the mark on her arm and he told me about the bit a few days earlier. We thought WOW that is a huge reaction to a mosquito bite. A Day passed and the red circular rash was not going away and it began to look like a bulls eye. There was a spot right in the middle of the rash were the bug had bitten her around that was a reddish purple rash, and around that was a bright red raised (some days) circle. I was speaking to a friend on the phone explaining what Cara's rash looked like and she told me to look up tick bites. I googled tick bites and went to images, there it was, the same rash that was on Cara's arm. I read on and the circular rash on her arm was a symptom of Lyme disease. I called my husband and he took her to the clinic the next morning and it was confirmed Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is an infection caused by the corkscrew-shaped bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. These bacteria are spread by the bite of black legged ticks (also called the deer ticks). The black legged tick is found sporadically throughout the province. Not all ticks carry Lyme disease and even with a bite from an infected tick, there is only a small chance of getting Lyme disease. We were told it is very rare, especially where we live...... And of course Cara gets it. She is now on a course of antibiotics for 2 weeks and hopefully it will take care of the Lyme disease and she will feel better.