This morning I spent an hour and a half talking to Scott for the Juicebox Podcast which is featured on his blog, Arden’s Day. Scott and I talked about issues with diabetes accommodations at school, and how to negotiate for some of the things that may seem like common sense to D-parents, but that schools aren’t always so quick to embrace. I had specific questions about how he managed to convince his daughter’s school to allow him to manage her diabetes from afar via text while she is at school. Many schools have strict “no cell phone” policies, and our school in particular has been prickly about allowing cell phone use, even for medical care, unless Angelina is in the office being directly supervised by the nurse or health tech. Of course, my feelings (and I’m sure the feelings of many others) is that this requirement seems to defeat the potential benefit of texting. My desire to be able to communicate with Angelina through text is to help avoid some of the extremes that would require an adult’s help, such as very high or low blood sugar, and also allow her to remain in the classroom so she is not missing important instruction or classwork because of her diabetes care. From my perspective, she and I being able to text during the day about her diabetes care is a win-win situation. She gets more butt-in-seat time in class AND I am able to help her address issues with blood sugar levels as they happen, instead of waiting until the next office check-in time – at which point it could be anywhere from 1 to 3 hours that a rogue blood sugar goes unchecked.
The podcast will be shared in the next couple of weeks on Arden’s Day and I will be sharing a link to it if any of my readers are interested in hearing it at that time. I also will likely be writing a bit more about school preparations and 504 Plans in the next few weeks as we inch closer to back to school time. Be sure to check out the “504 Plan” and “Education” tags in the upper left sidebar to see my previous posts on these subjects and the evolution of our relationship with Angelina’s school regarding her diabetes.
