My family was good with Kallie and the new things she had to do, too. I’m sure it helped that they’d gotten used to cooking me healthy meals since I’d been playing tennis practically my whole life. It didn’t seem to bother them at all to have to test Kallie’s blood sugars and correct them when they got too low or too high, and they’d always been active anyway. I was glad that I was able to leave Kallie with my parents for extended periods without worrying. I could leave her with Lenore too, but Lenore liked to sneak treats for her. I know she didn’t do it to hurt Kallie, but as I tried to explain, extra sugars without extra insulin to cover them could be damaging.

Luckily, my parents were never in the habit of giving out treats in the form of food. If they did, it was generally fruit or some cashews or something, which was totally fine. If my dad did want to take her for ice cream, he always went somewhere that had sugar-free varieties. As a kid, I’d hated being kept to such a strict diet, and I knew that Howie had despised it, especially since he didn’t even play tennis. But with Kallie’s condition, I was grateful that my parents didn’t need a lot of training in how to care for her.

I don’t want to make it sound like it was always easy. It wasn’t. Sure, Kallie was generally very well-behaved, but she was still a little kid, and I couldn’t protect her from everything. Alice and I had discussed taking her back to her play group once she’d been out of the hospital for a bit, and while Alice was gone, I decided to try it since Kallie had been a bit antsy. She was fine until the other kids got cupcakes. I’d left her there after giving instructions on how to adjust her insulin pump, but the other parents didn’t exactly feel comfortable and had given Kallie some apple slices instead of a cupcake. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered her, since she loved apples, but the fact that she didn’t have what the other kids did upset her.

It wasn’t like I was upset with the other parents for not adjusting the pump. I could understand their discomfort, but it hurt me to see Kallie upset. By the time I picked her up it was too late for a treat, since messing with the pump levels so soon before she went to bed wasn’t a good idea. I promised to take her for a treat the next day, but it didn’t do much to calm her down.