Last summer, when I picked my nine year old son up from diabetes camp, his eyes, like those of the counselors and other campers, were bloodshot…
“Are you back?” I asked my son, as I always do when he’s had a low blood sugar and then juice.
“No,” he answered.
I checked him again: 47. Just two digits…
The past two weeks my six-year-old daughter, who does not have type 1 diabetes, has been wearing an old, worn insulin pump pouch that belongs to her eight-year-old brother, who does have type 1 diabetes.
There were not only many things I didn't know before diabetes was part of my life, there were things I never imagined I'd know. And chances are that you, D-Parents out there, have plenty to add.
After seeing one of our son’s shot charts, he came up with his own version for us, inspired by my son’s choice of a cowboy Halloween costume that fall.
I have a child with type 1 diabetes. That means on many occasions I’ve helped my kid use insulin at a table in a restaurant. Taking him to a bathroom to give him an injection would send a message to him and the rest of the world that he should be ashamed of having type 1 diabetes, that he’s doing something dirty or illicit.
Caroline Carter never imagined she’d trade her basketball sneakers for stilettos, but in a few months this 18-year-old Miss New Hampshire will compete for the Miss America crown in Atlantic City. In the meantime, Carter talks about her type 1 diabetes diagnosis day, the people who inspire her, and her belief that diabetes should never be an excuse.
She says, “I wouldn’t wish a chronic illness on any family.” The stress that comes with it while dealing with everything else “can bring out characteristics in a partner that were already there, but more magnified.”
Ever since he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes four years ago, my eight-year-old son has begged for my husband and me to let him go to diabetes summer camp. But it wasn’t until a couple of months ago, when my son’s endocrinologist pulled me aside during a routine appointment, that I got the push we all needed. “It’ll be so good for him,” she said, as though she were handing me a prescription.
The dentist whispered something to his assistant about fetching something. She quickly returned with an empty juice box and a Ziploc bag of white sugar.
He dangled them in the air.
“This is what you’re putting on his teeth,” he said.
I could feel my face get hot.