There are very few things that make me angry.

But one of the things that I find is when I get really furious, it’s because in that moment I feel like I have no control.

This is one of those instances.

These are called “Lockdown Bags” and I have to make one bag for every teacher in Wendy’s middle school.  The contain about 75 carbs in them in case she gets low, along with a few alcohol pads.

This seems like a good idea you probably think.  This is good in case Wendy gets too low so that she can get some sugar in her so she doesn’t pass out.  The problem with insulin dependent diabetics is that your brain still needs carbs to function, and your body needs insulin to digest the carbs, but if you give too much insulin, your body shuts down, you pass out and sometimes go into convulsions.  Diabetics can often tell when they are getting low because they get headaches and shaky, sometimes irrational, and usually hungry.  We’ve all had  moments when we are very hungry, where we get shaky and irritable, well, that’s our blood sugar getting too low.  So this gives you an idea.

Our bodies, non-diabetic bodies, won’t continue into the pass-out, convulse stage, like a type one diabetic body will.  That’s when it gets scary, and when the diabetic needs an emergency shot of glucagon to get the systems of the body going again.  If she doesn’t get it within a certain amount of time, quite frankly, she will die.

The term is called “Severe Hypolgycemia Resulting in Death,” but it is also known as the “Dead In Bed” syndrome, because roughly this is what kills 1 in 20 diabetics in the middle of the night.  Their blood sugar goes low and they don’t know it and they never wake up.  There’s an article about Dead In Bed Syndrome if you’d like to read it.  It’s not uplifting.

This is why, in our house, we have our alarm set for 2 am and check Wendy’s sugar every night,without fail.

But I digress.

I’m giving your the reasoning behind the Lockdown Bags.  The extra-sugar-just-in-case isn’t why it makes me angry.

It’s the Lockdown Part.

Picture this.  There is a single person shooter in a school, so the school goes on Lockdown.  All the doors are locked and the children shelter in place.  This could happen for a few minutes to, let’s say, 24 hours.  No one goes in, no one goes out, while local law enforcement tries its hardest to take down the gunman and save the kids.

So, what happens if and when Wendy goes low during a lockdown?  When too much insulin in her system means that she goes low, and she can’t leave the classroom to go to the nurse because there’s a gunman in the building.  So these ziploc bags that I make at the beginning of the school year are little insurance policies that if there is a gunman in the building, my daughter won’t die from hypoglycemia.

If there’s a GUNMAN IN A SCHOOL my daughter won’t die from HYPOGLYCEMIA.

You’ll recall in my first statement that I get angry when I feel like I don’t have any control of a situation.  Here is an amazing example.  Here we are in a society that constantly grapples with the right to buy and bear arms while still protecting innocents who get killed from the wrong people buying and bearing arms.

Please don’t lecture me about the Second Amendment, I’m a college professor.  I teach the Constitution for a living.  And I get it, we were a country that was formed from a Revolution that forcibly took away governmental power with our guns.  So we wanted them protected.  Now there are powerful lobbyists who feel that any sanction on gun ownership, like let’s say  someone on the No Fly List or has a history of Mental Illness can’t buy a gun, is a slippery slope where the government will just start willy-nilly adding people to the No-Fly List and get people committed so that our right to bear arms will be truncated.

Every time a horrific shooting occurs in a nightclub or a bar or a school, these lobbyists come out and say, “What a tragedy, but there’s nothing we can do.  Such a shame.  If only we could arm more people this wouldn’t happen.”

It is the sacrificing of innocents to protect an ideal from 200 years ago.

What a mess we’ve created.

And all I’m trying to do is keep my kid safe.  I’ve thought about sending the bill for these “Lockdown Bags” to these lobbyist groups.  That’s something they can do.

All I can do is pack these silly little bags in the hopes that they never need to use them.