Sunday, June 6, 2010

D-I-A-B-E-T-E-S

so.... I did a really bad job of updating last week! i apologize.

who's ready for camp kudzu week 2??? I AM!! it's always great to meet a new set of campers every week. I've got cabin 7 so I'm thinking they will be about 13 yr old girls. maybe?

Some more of what happened last week:

What do a certain group of professional cyclists and kudzu campers have in common?? Type 1 Diabetes. 5 of the cyclists from Team Type 1 (made up of cyclists with the betes!) came last week and stayed for two days. they talked to the kids about how not to let diabetes hold them back! they also stressed how important it is to manage their blood sugar well so that they can live their dream of becoming pro cyclists. then they just hung out with the kids and went to activities! one of my favorite things to do is watch adults who get thrown into camp do all of our songs and dances. it was pretty cute. the youngest one (who was 2o. younger than me!) really concentrated to get it all down pat! by the time they left they were experts at ctl life.

thursday night was...... the dance!! remember my camper who had a date monday at breakfast? well she ditched him and picked up a new guy to take to the dance. a few of my other girls had dates too! oh to be young and have camp love...

speaking of dancing, i had the dance activity at least once a day. i was pretty nervous to do it, but it turned out to be AWESOME! every cabin that came wanted to learn the 'Hoedown Throwdown' (thank you miley) and even the one group that kinda got bored, the counselors wanted to learn more line dances. i have lots of those btw, which is weird since i do not like country music. but hey, there's a first time for everything, right? and 'callin baton rouge' is one of my absolute favorite songs at the moment. one cabin at dance, cabin 3, was so cute and enthusiastic. they ALL wanted to tell me there diabetes stories and how when they were little they would take glucose tablets from where their mom hid them because they tasted so good, etc. and one of those girls gave me a headband she made!! She had two, and I said that i loved them because they were adorable, and she practically forced me to take it. we had an argument. and you just can't argue against a 10 year old girl. they will win!! another girl in the same cabin saw my tattoo and said 'you have a sunshine tattoo?' of course i said yes, and then she asked if i had cancer and what type i had. i was pretty caught off guard because most ten year olds don't know what the other camps are for, let alone ask questions about it!

one of my best sessions last week was definitely radio. i was paired up with my dear roommie Grace and we had a cabin of ten year old boys. they were probably the funniest cabin at camp. they wanted to do a radio show and have me and grace be their guest callers. not to mention that their song requests were epic! they told grace that her character was named penelope (haha). both of us talked with funny accents. mine ended up coming out a jamaican-hispanic mix. but the kids thought both of us were hilarious, which is what it's all about!! one of the things we are striving for with the radio is to make everything more camp-centric, so when we called in, both grace and i pretended to be moms of campers at kudzu. my kid, i think i named her amelia, was new and does injections, so i asked how she was being taken care of there and helped. those boys were the best advocates for their camp. they talked about how great it is. they talked about the pump palace and how everyone helps everyone else learn to manage their diabetes better. it was pretty adorable and awesome and everything that we strive for at camp.

this week i checked my blood sugar for the first time!!! i even pricked my finger myself. next step=pump site. one of the girls in cabin 11 who comes back for another camp told me that she would bring extra sites just in case any ctl staff doesn't get the chance to get a pump site this week! woo! i'm pretty nervous about it actually, but that's okay!! for those who don't know, pump sites involve needles, and i am not too comfortable with those. it's great to get a bit of the experience that all these kids go through every day!


gah i can't wait for another great week at camp twin lakes!!!

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