Remember the day your kid was diagnosed? I brought my sick 9-year-old, Max, in to the pediatrician and felt my stomach drop to the floor when they brought in a blood sugar meter -- I knew what that meant. Our no-nonsense nurse practitioner said, "Yeah, it's diabetes." And that was it. Life as we knew it was gone forever. Time to find a new normal.
The hospitalization is kind of a blur. My father-in-law is a Type 1 also, as well as my grandmother, so we had a pretty substantial understanding of diabetes already. I don't think there was ever a moment where anyone said, "Max, you have Type 1 diabetes." I do recall that some well-meaning hospital person burbled, "You can be anything you want to be!" and he glared and replied, "What I'd LIKE to be is not diabetic." Bet that's the last time they used that line!
Since then we've learned that it's possible to travel internationally with syringes and vials of drugs but NOT a can of Sprite, that used test strips can lodge between floor boards and puncture your bare feet, that insulin has its own smell, that moms who always have candy in their purse are very popular with children, that high blood sugars can cause lows and lows can cause highs, and that my son would rather inject himself with a needle than brush his teeth.
All in all, an interesting year.
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