Strike or Spare?

Yesterday I told you about a birthday party that Ally would attend...without me!  If you haven't read Baby Steps to Independence check that out HERE first.

Do you know the difference in a Strike and a Spare ?

A strike is when you knock all the pins down (this is the object of the game!) with the first ball.  A spare is still considered great...you knock all of the pins down using two balls.

So the object of the game yesterday was for Ally to attend a friend's birthday party at the bowling alley without Mom in tow.  Now this took a complete reset for me to feel comfortable with this.  You see, Keith or I have always been the ones to eyeball the birthday goodies, estimate the carb counts, take into account the amount of activity and tell Ally how much insulin she needs.  Keith said that she could do this, I wasn't sure.  Even though our opinions were split a bit, we were able to come to a decision that we felt good about.  We pinned down our approach and went for it!  The scorecard is in...

So, as you can see Ally did GREAT!  A strike!  She was very responsible and followed through with our plan.  We sent one of our cell phones with her and she was to call us just before eating pizza and cake.  And exactly one hour into the party my phone rang.  She told me what her CGM read.  She said she felt fine.  She described the piece of pizza on her plate to me as "thin crust cheese pizza, approximately 2 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches." (I'm sure she had a little help there from my friend, the host of the party ;)  I told her how many carbs to enter into her pump for the pizza and the cake.  She repeated that number to me, told me what the pump had calculated as her insulin bolus.  And that was it.  She hung up.  I wanted to ask her a million questions...Do you think you will eat it all?  Are you sure you feel ok?  But I didn't.  I let her take charge of this one.  And she did great!

Now, the scorecard also reveals that I did well.  A spare!  Hey, that's better than I expected.  I figured that I'd do no better than a great big gutter ball!  I felt good about our plan.  I was confident in Ally.  I knew that the birthday girls mom (my friend) would call me if there were any concerns.  BUT I did underestimate the carbs for the pizza and cake...maybe on purpose!  I knew in my head that I was low balling it.  But I didn't want to take a chance in the other direction and have her go low.  So we fought some high numbers for the rest of the afternoon.  I still think we were successful in taking a baby step towards Ally's independence!