People with Type 1 diabetes, and their caregivers, are not given the option of defeating this disease, the magnitude of this disease’s strength is very humbling.
If Type 1 diabetes were a person it would be that guy or girl in high school that you thought was your friend. You hung out together, ate lunch together, studied together, even slept over each other’s houses. You talked about going to the Prom together. Then your friend tells you they are not going to the Prom. They’d rather skip it this year. Then you come to find out that although they told you they were not going to the prom, what they really meant was that they were just not going to the prom with you. Quite humbling to have someone you thought you understood, someone you spent countless hours a day with, someone who became an integral part of your life, to just turn the tables and leave you in the dust.
That is how it is to live with Type 1 diabetes. I read everything I can about how to understand and help my son live with Type 1 diabetes. I think about diabetes and numbers all the time. Numbers permeate my thoughts. Even my 3 year old daughter without diabetes will ask me, “Is that a good number?” when I am changing the channel for her. Type 1 diabetes goes to Shop Rite with me, it comes to the park, the pool, and the mall. Sometimes, for a brief moment, I actually get bold enough and feel like I understand my son’s disease and then Wham! diabetes decides to remind me that we are not in sync, that I really don’t know this disease, and even though it accompanies us in and out of our days and nights, we are certainly not friends.
For several days now my son’s glucose numbers have been awesome. We have seen only in range numbers. He was feeling fantastic. I started to puff out my chest a little actually believing that I have a handle on all of this diabetes stuff. That’s just when diabetes decides to drop me down a few pegs, deflate my chest just a little and throws us a couple of unexplained numbers in the 300s.
When my son’s numbers are out of range he does not feel fantastic. He doesn’t feel sick, and thankfully because we are on top of it with all the testing we do, he does not remain out of range for long, but still two high numbers in a row do make him cranky, irritable, and sometimes angry. It is not him, it is the high numbers bothering his body. He wants to feel well, but the numbers take a longer time to come down when they are higher, so now we have to wait. We make the corrections that are required to bring him into range, but we have to wait for the insulin to do it’s job and bring those numbers down.
That is when having Type 1 diabetes and being the caregiver of a five year old with Type 1 becomes very humbling. We are at the mercy of the insulin and it’s ability to work properly and quickly so that my son can feel like himself. I am not in control at this time. I am not friends with this awful disease. I am at the mercy of insulin to make my son feel better. I am at the mercy of diabetes that it plays the game correctly and does not throw in another wrench like ketones which would make my son very sick.
It is very humbling to have something like a disease take away even a few hours of my son’s otherwise perfectly happy, healthy five year old life.