Before June 13, 2015, at dinner time we would fill our plates or grab a snack and start eating. Now, it takes a little more effort before we can eat.

As you all probably know by now, we don’t limit Luke when it comes to carbs. He eats anything he ate before diagnosis. He eats anything that we eat- unless it has onions, peppers, or mushrooms, but that’s just because he doesn’t like onions, peppers, or mushrooms.

Once the meal is made or the snack is decided, Luke needs to check his blood sugar to see what his number is. (The pump will adjust the numbers, whether he is high or low.) Then, we need to look at the snack/meal and figure out how many total carbs are in it. Figuring out carbs is probably the one thing Luke can’t do fully on his own. However, instead of doing it for him, we ask him how many carbs he thinks he’s eating. Then, we go over it and check it together.

Some foods are easier than others. If it’s a packaged dinner like mac and cheese or jambalaya, the carb count is right on the box. We would need to measure his serving so that we can get the right amount of carbs.

Chain restaurants are also easy because they are required by law to have nutritional information. I usually find this on their website.

Other foods, specifically, the homemade ones, are trickier. For these meals or snacks I’m thankful for My Fitness Pal’s recipe tab. You can import a recipe from the web or manually enter one that you made. After submitting the number of servings each recipe makes, it will break down the carb count for you.

And some meals we just make an educated guess. We do this most often at non-chain restaurants or ones with buffets and at other people’s houses.

Once we know how many (or about how many) carbs his meal has, he has to enter his current blood sugar number and the number of carbs into his pump. The pump will administer the insulin he needs to cover his meal and, if his sugar isn’t in range, to correct the high or low blood sugar.

THEN… he may eat.

Whew.

This is each and every time he eats. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Seven days a week. Twenty-four hours a day.

Until there’s a cure.