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Ala Dirty Dancing.

Care of type 1 diabetes cannot be put on the back burner regardless of illness, stress or excitement.

Did you ever have such a bad cold that you just wanted to drink NyQuil and go straight to bed for 8 hours?
Have you ever had such a great time at the beach that you forgot to eat lunch?
Has something so important been on your mind that you just walk for hours to clear your head?

This sense of abandonment, where you can just forget about your life for a while, cannot happen when you are the caregiver of a child living with Type 1 diabetes, or an adult living with Type 1. Sure, you can forget, or pretend to forget, about diabetes for chunks of hours at a time. You can go from breakfast to lunch, on a good day, without worrying about a low or high, but that’s about it. You can’t go much longer without remembering that you are resposible for taking care of someone with diabetes. Never can you go eight hours at the beach just running on pure fun and energy. The fun and energy are certainly still there, but so is diabetes and defintely blood glucose checks…they will not be put in the corner.

Today we went to an Easter Egg hunt at the beach. It was fantastic. Great weather. Tons of excitement. Millions, or what felt like millions, of kids. Even more parents. Buckets. Sand. Eggs. Shovels. Blood Glucose meters. Candy for lows. Wait. What? You mean you didn’t bring your glucose meter to your egg hunt. Well, we did. We bring it everywhere. Type 1 diabetes doesn’t care that we are at an egg hunt with millions of kids having a blast digging in the sand for eggs. Type 1 diabetes doesn’t care that egg hunting is a 1,000 year old tradition from back when they didn’t even know what Type 1 diabetes was.

Type 1 diabetes doesn’t care, but I do. That’s why I no longer fret that even with the cold of the Century, I will still not get to down that NyQuil and savor the uninterrupted sleep of younger days, I will be up every 4 hours to check my boy’s sugar while he gets the rest he needs.

That is why at the beach, while my boy runs around with sand in his hair and a smile on his face, I will be cleaning a finger every few hours to check his sugar to make sure eveything is ok on the inside too.

That is why no matter how much I want to grab a few books and find a small coffee shop where I could read for hours and hours drinking myself into a caffeine haze, I don’t, type 1 diabetes is why I won’t.

Type 1 diabetes doesn’t care, but I do.

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Boo Barbara Walters

Someone please tell Barbara Walters of The View that having Type 1 diabetes does not make you an alcoholic. It is statements like this whereby this blog was born.

Of course any sane human being knows that having Type 1 diabetes does not make you an alcoholic, except if that human being is Barbara Walters. She had the nerve to ask Mary Tyler Moore, a woman with Type 1 diabetes for over 40 years, “Did having diabetes make you an alcoholic?” on Thursday morning’s The View.

Ridiculous use of words, or misuse of words, like this are the exact reason for this blog. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Barbara Walters was trying to ask Ms. Moore if having to deal with a chronic illness for over 1/2 of her life may have caused her to start using alcohol as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, that is not what she said.

Had Ms. Walters chosen her words more wisely, maybe Ms. Moore could have had an intelligent conversation regarding Type 1 diabetes. Instead the interview was taken down to a level below mediocrity where Ms. Walters asked inane questions such as the above one regarding alcoholism.

Had Ms. Walters focused on how to live successfully with Type 1 diabetes then some people may have learned something. Instead she single-handedly created another myth about Type 1 diabetes that my son will have to debunk for the rest of his life.

Now the saddest part about all of this nonsense, is that someone who is undereducated about Type 1 diabetes now has more misinformation swimming around their head. Someone out there, one day in the future, is going to tell my son to be careful when he drinks a beer at his 21st birthday, because having Type 1 diabetes may make him prone to alcoholism.

I think Barbara Walters owes all of the people living with Type 1 diabetes an apology. She should be ashamed about how little she knew about Type 1 diabetes before the interview. She should be even more ashamed at how less people know after watching her poor excuse for an interview.

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Complication. Not yet.

While there are complications associated with having Type 1 diabetes, with proper care, these complications can possibly be avoided.

I am not one to talk about complications from having Type 1 diabetes, but apparently my five year old son’s friends are. This conversation took place today between my son and me.

Son-“Mama can I go blind from having Type 1 diabetes?”
Me-“Why do you ask baby?”
Son-“My friend from class asked me if I will go blind because I have Type 1 diabetes.”
Me-“What did you tell him?”
Son-“I told him I didn’t know, and I would ask my mom.”

I explained to my son that while some people do go blind after having diabetes for many, many years, it probably wouldn’t happen to him if we continue to keep his numbers in range. Let me repeat that…I explained to my son that while some people do go blind after having diabetes for many, many years, it probably wouldn’t happen to him if we continue to keep his numbers in range.

I will end here, because I think I’ve already written my point. Have a heart. Don’t talk about complications when talking to your children about my son’s diabetes. He doesn’t need to have these conversations yet. He is only five. Let’s keep some childhood innocence for him, okay?