The Big Blue Test is one of my favorite diabetes advocacy campaigns. It’s very simple: check your blood sugar, exercise for 15-20 minutes and then check again. Enter the results online at www.bigbluetest.org. Sometimes we forget how important exercise to manage diabetes. This is a great way to bring that point home.
We’ve done it a couple of times, but when I heard they were expanding it to schools, I knew Benny would want to take part. He’s in the Turning Tigers this year, a very popular jump rope club at his school only open to 4th and 5th graders. They perform at events like Davidson College basketball games & Town Day. My daughter did it when she was in grade school and still remembers the routine, almost three years later.
We were thrilled when the Turning Tigers agreed to take the Big Blue Test. It’s the perfect setting; almost 50 kids jump rope an hour before school starts. There’s even another child in the group with type 1 diabetes (thanks, Michael, for helping us out!). I explained the program to the kids…
And off we went!
[youtube id=”e4Hu6vXSuVs” width=”600″ height=”350″]
The boys were really excited when their teacher, Mr. Rabb, agreed to check his blood sugar for the video. What you don’t see is that it took us almost ten minutes to get it done! Benny had asked ahead of time if Mr. Rabb was willing. When he was, we decided to bring in a different meter and lancer to use. We could have easily switched out the needle in Benny’s, but we have a few extra lying around. In fact, I opened up a brand new one just for this.
The boys poked Mr. Rabb’s pinky twice. No blood. They did it again, setting the lancer on #2 (the higher the number, the deeper the needle goes in). Still nothing. We switched fingers, we dialed it up to 3. Then 4. After I tried twice (pressing pretty hard) we figured out what was wrong.
It helps to have a needle in the lancer.
So thanks, Mr. Rabb, for agreeing to help out and then being a great sport when it didn’t go exactly as planned!
Learn more about the Big Blue Test (just click the picture)
This is fantastic! Way to go, B!!