{"id":3119,"date":"2009-12-02T08:28:22","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T13:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119"},"modified":"2015-12-30T06:34:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T11:34:20","slug":"diabetes-the-next-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119","title":{"rendered":"Diabetes: The Next Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Adam<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was twelve, a friend of our mother\u2019s came to pick my sister and me up from school during lunch.\u00a0 She explained that Jonathan, our 18-month-old brother, was in the hospital, and that he would be fine, and that our parents would explain everything when we saw them after dinner that night.\u00a0 We spent several nervous hours doing fractions and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with their family, until our parents finally arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cJonathan has diabetes,\u201d my mother explained.\u00a0 \u201cHis body can\u2019t process sugar.\u00a0 He\u2019s going to be fine, but he\u2019ll need to take shots several times a day, and you\u2019re both going to learn to help us test his blood.\u00a0\u00a0 And you can\u2019t ever<\/em> give him anything to eat or drink without asking.\u00a0 He can\u2019t have any<\/em> sugar, ever<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

My sister and I were horrified.\u00a0 Shots?\u00a0 Multiple <\/em>shots?\u00a0 And something about blood<\/em>?\u00a0 And no sugar, ever?\u00a0 Clearly, this was a fate worse than death.<\/p>\n

This was 1993.\u00a0 Jonathan\u2019s first blood sugar readers were roughly the size of a Gameboy and devoured AA-batteries.\u00a0 We pricked his 18-month-old fingers with a spring-loaded needle gun, and milked his blood onto coded strips.\u00a0 Only 18-months old, he couldn\u2019t do much more than cry.\u00a0 Which he did. \u00a0All the time. \u00a0But I remembered thinking that, at least, getting diabetes so young, he\u2019d never really know what he was missing.\u00a0 For him, life would always have been like this.<\/p>\n

Our family, on the other hand, had big adjustments to make.\u00a0 Once frequent hikers and campers, we stopped spending nights out in the wilderness around the campfire \u2013 for if Jonathan exercised too much, or ate something he shouldn\u2019t, we\u2019d be hours from medical assistance.<\/p>\n

Everywhere that we went, we had to bring not only the Gameboy and huge pack of batteries, but also a cooler.\u00a0 This held extra fruit and cookies, but its real purpose was to transport two little glass vials of insulin, which had to be kept cold at all times.\u00a0 These vials were sealed with a vacuum, so for every dose of insulin removed an equal amount of air would be put back in.\u00a0 The syringes were tiny and the numbers hard to read, and air bubbles got trapped inside and needed to be flicked out.\u00a0 Jonathan\u2019s dinnertime shots became quite a production.\u00a0 Nosy patrons at the Broadway Diner would wonder loudly why my seemingly-pleasant suburban parents appeared to be shooting their young son up with drugs in public.<\/p>\n

\"Kris&Jonathan1\"<\/a>
Kris & Jonathan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cooler became not-so-affectionately-known as \u201cthe kit.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 As in:\u00a0 \u201cWhere the hell is the kit?\u00a0 Did you remember the kit?\u00a0 Guys, is the kit in the back seat?\u00a0 Dennis, call the restaurant.\u00a0 I can\u2019t find the damn kit.\u201d\u00a0 Our new inanimate sibling, the kit, came with us everywhere: to Dairy Queen, where Jonathan could only have the Sugar-Free Orange Creamsicles; to restaurants where one of us had to taste every Diet Coke, every time, because the waiters could not be trusted; to grandparents\u2019 houses in Buffalo and Florida on holidays; and on educational vacations to Colonial Williamsburg, the Franklin Institute, and the Amish Country in the summertime.\u00a0 Airport security pored through the kit every time, scanning it with X-rays, and arguing as my mother explained that Juvenile Diabetes was a little different than what their aging fathers-in-law had \u2013 and that it could not be controlled by diet alone.<\/p>\n

The doctors at the hospital constantly criticized my parents for improperly filling out the little log book with all the numbers that the Gameboy spit out.\u00a0 Then they\u2019d cheerfully tell us that Jonathan would be much healthier without so much sugar \u2013 and that science was making great progress on a cure.\u00a0 Surely by the time he was all grown up, diabetes would be a thing of the past.<\/p>\n

Today, Jonathan is 18 and no cure has materialized. \u00a0Just about everything about having Type I diabetes, however, has<\/em> gotten easier as Jonathan has grown up.\u00a0 Technology has developed over 16 years and that first bulky Gameboy has shrunken steadily, and gotten faster.\u00a0 His new readers need less blood than ever to do a reading, and run off of lithium batteries that barely ever need replacing.<\/p>\n

His home blood sugar reader now is about the size of a Blackberry, and it keeps a log automatically.\u00a0 It tracks everything from his glucose-by-meal to the insulin he injects.\u00a0 It has timers and alarms to keep him from forgetting to test himself.\u00a0 He also has a second, even tinier, reader that he takes to school every day \u2013 so small that it fits in his pocket.\u00a0 Before he goes to visit the doctor, he downloads the data from both devices onto his iPhone, which has an application that merges the data together and puts it onto a graph.<\/p>\n

Diabetes?\u00a0 Yeah, there\u2019s an app for that.\u00a0 Actually, there are twelve.<\/p>\n

Healthy eating has also become much easier.\u00a0 Low-carb and sugar-free options have become almost universally available, thanks to an influx of Atkins and South Beach dieters.\u00a0 These diet crazes also helped illuminate the link between carbohydrates and sugar, and now he knows to keep his blood sugar numbers in check by regulating both.\u00a0 And, of course, the iPhone also has dieting apps that list the carbohydrate\/sugar content of everything he could ever want to eat \u2013 including popular menu items at restaurant chains worldwide.\u00a0 Thanks to all these changes, Jonathan can now estimate within a few grams, his exact glucose intake, and adjust his insulin accordingly.<\/p>\n

But it gets even better.\u00a0 In our brave new millennia, gone too are the refrigerated glass vials and sketchy syringes.\u00a0 His new \u201cFlexPens\u201d do not need to be kept cold, and have far more accurate dials to regulate the exact amount of insulin that he takes.\u00a0 He still has a kit, but it is small enough to fit in his pants pocket, and this has completely un-tethered our family.\u00a0 Not longer do we constantly seek hotel rooms with refrigerated minibars and endure the questioning of airport security.\u00a0 Now we\u2019ve begun going on family sailing trips, able to stay off-shore for days, without worrying about MEDEVAC helicopters.<\/p>\n

And, wherever we travel, Jonathan asks for his new favorite drink: a (virgin) Strawberry Daiquiri.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Today, his sentence for life-without-sugar has been pardoned.<\/p>\n

Because the old syringe-and-air-bubble system was so inaccurate, we wanted to avoid any unnecessary insulin shots.\u00a0 But today, able to precisely calculate carbs and sugar, Jonathan can easily and precisely counter the Daiquiris with insulin from his FlexPens.\u00a0 Today, his favorite restaurant is a Beni-Hana style Japanese restaurant where food-flipping chefs drown shrimp in teriyaki sauce.\u00a0 Finally able to drive this year, he and his friends go to the Cheesecake Factory where he gets the \u201cCrusted Chicken Romano\u201d \u2013 breaded chicken, smothered in sweet marinara \u2013 and he knows exactly what shot to take afterwards to counteract it.<\/p>\n

Jonathan still chooses, however, to avoid the cheesecake.\u00a0 And he says that, while he now can<\/em> drink regular Coke, it is too syrupy for him – he prefers Diet, and puts Equal in his tea instead of real sugar.<\/p>\n

The doctors we spoke to years ago may have been overly optimistic about developing a cure, but they were right about one thing \u2013 Jonathan is, in many ways, healthier than other kids his age.\u00a0 Once, I thought the upside of getting diabetes so young was that he\u2019d never know what he was missing.\u00a0 Now I see that it is even better that he can now make these choices for himself.\u00a0 Growing up, Jonathan could only rarely go on sleepovers or overnight class trips.\u00a0 This month he has just been accepted to college, and he is gearing up to go off on his own \u2013 fully portable and completely in control of his diabetes.<\/p>\n

Kristopher Jansma has a BA in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. \u00a0He is currently a Lecturer in Writing at Manhattanville College and lives in New York City with his wife, Leah. \u00a0Please visit http:\/\/fortystories.blogspot.com<\/a> for more!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We pricked his 18-month-old fingers with a spring-loaded needle gun, and milked his blood onto coded strips …he couldn\u2019t do much more than cry. Which he did. All the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":3149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1435],"tags":[20],"yoast_head":"\nDiabetes, A Child's Story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kristopher Jansma\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119\",\"name\":\"Diabetes, A Child's Story\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG\",\"datePublished\":\"2009-12-02T13:28:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-12-30T11:34:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/1d3e09dd8e59da13b9639f5dce5f8f5b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG\",\"width\":1426,\"height\":835},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Diabetes: The Next Generation\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\",\"name\":\"ASweetLife\",\"description\":\"The Diabetes Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/1d3e09dd8e59da13b9639f5dce5f8f5b\",\"name\":\"Kristopher Jansma\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fe9f36a4e558e46b192f3c7ad27fe37?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fe9f36a4e558e46b192f3c7ad27fe37?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kristopher Jansma\"},\"description\":\"Kristopher Jansma has a BA in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. He is currently a Lecturer in Writing at Manhattanville College and lives in New York City with his wife, Leah. Please visit http:\/\/dictionarystories.blogspot.com for more!\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?author=110\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Diabetes, A Child's Story","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kristopher Jansma","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119","name":"Diabetes, A Child's Story","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG","datePublished":"2009-12-02T13:28:22+00:00","dateModified":"2015-12-30T11:34:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/1d3e09dd8e59da13b9639f5dce5f8f5b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG","contentUrl":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Adam-with-Glucometer3.JPG","width":1426,"height":835},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=3119#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Diabetes: The Next Generation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/","name":"ASweetLife","description":"The Diabetes Magazine","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/1d3e09dd8e59da13b9639f5dce5f8f5b","name":"Kristopher Jansma","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fe9f36a4e558e46b192f3c7ad27fe37?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3fe9f36a4e558e46b192f3c7ad27fe37?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Kristopher Jansma"},"description":"Kristopher Jansma has a BA in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. He is currently a Lecturer in Writing at Manhattanville College and lives in New York City with his wife, Leah. Please visit http:\/\/dictionarystories.blogspot.com for more!","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?author=110"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}