Friday

     Friday morning started with a breakfast buffet.  Then Gene and  I attended "Making Sense of Sensor Data" with Gary Schneiner.  I was so excited to meet this author of Think Like A Pancreas!  After a break, we attended "Can We Prevent Type 1 Diabetes" with Jay Skyler.  That one will need its own post.  Then we had lunch and one last trip to the Exhibit Hall.  Then Gene and I attended "Advanced Pumping Strategies That Work" with John Walsh, author of Pumping Insulin.  It was amazing!  It included lots of tips like a 1% rise in TDD (total daily dose) will drop the average (which correlates to A1C) 4 points.  Your TDD is too high if you have 2 low to high swings in a day.  His book is also full of great formulas like this.  Whenever I need to just start over for Andrew, I pull out his book.  An example of this will be in a few weeks.  Andrew starts baseball practices Monday.  Then he goes back to school in a couple weeks.  He will run high the first week because of the excitement and nerves of something new.  Then, he will settle into the routine of higher activity.  At least I think so - there isn't much recess in 5th grade.  This will require more than small tweaking.  I'll sit down with the formulas and his schedule (P.E. is after lunch this year) and essentially start over.  My job will be easier because of the teaching of our great nurse at Vanderbilt and John Walsh.  After this session was a break and then the Closing Keynote by Jay Hewitt.  He is an Ironman Triathlete who began training for the Ironman after he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.  He was a very inspiring man and speaker!
     Ryan and the other teens spent the day at Hollywood Studios.  They were well supervised and had a great time.  They were back by the time we got out of the keynote, so we all went to the pool for a little while.  The teens had a dinner dance from 8 until midnight, and the tweens had a tween social from 8 until 11.  Andrew ate the ice cream and left.  Kaitlyn and Ryan had fun and stayed until the bitter end!  Again, I didn't have that much to do, but I was tired waiting up for my teen and pre-teen.  There are definitely scary days ahead!