Category: Juvenile Diabetes

The Face of Diabetes in My Family

I’m usually very careful about what I share publicly that has to do with my family, but one thing I’m not shy about is my daughter’s Type 1 Diabetes. I have four beautiful girls who I would do absolutely anything for, so being given the diagnosis that my youngest (then 7) had an auto-immune disease that I couldn’t “fix” devastated me. That was in 2011. Now that we’ve lived with it for over four years, we’re kind of getting a handle on things. Kind of. There are still bad days. There are still times when she doesn’t feel like pricking her finger again, when she doesn’t even want to eat because she’ll have to check her blood and take insulin, when she is sick to death of counting carbohydrates.

And who can blame her? All I want for my children is to live a loving, productive, normal life. Or as normal as I can make it for them while they still live in my home. But this is one monster I can’t slay, and it kills me to admit that such exists. I pray for the advances we’ve seen in just the past four years to keep on going at light speed. I don’t want her to have to become an adult with type 1. Why? For one thing, there are many other health complications that go along with this disease as a person ages. This isn’t the type of diabetes that can be controlled by diet and exercise alone. Her pancreas doesn’t produce insulin the way it should, and at this time there’s no way to correct that. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The organization I’ve chosen to support for this journey is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. When we were first given the diagnosis it was the only one I knew existed. I now know there are others, but JDRF has been so good to us. Every event I attend, which happens at least twice a year, is full of information about the advances in research and ways they are trying to help type 1 diabetics live a more normal life. This foundation has a walk every year, where about 80% of the proceeds go directly to research. From my own personal research, that’s a phenomenal number. There are too many non-profits with a lot of overhead who can’t claim such a large amount actually goes to where it’s intended and desperately needed.

I know there are a lot of very valid charities out there. I know there is a lot of need and we can’t possibly fill it all. However, all I’m asking for is $1. If everyone who reads this post pitches in just that much to sponsor our walking team, we’ll be that much closer to our $500 goal. What can our one team do? In the past four years since our diagnosis, the artificial pancreas has gone from experimental to a reality. A drug called “smart insulin” was created and will soon be in human clinical trials, along with a procedure called encapsulation that will theoretically allow a T1D live without the disease for up to a year. I want these things to become a reality for my daughter. I don’t ever want her to be afraid of intimacy as an adult because her abdomen is bruised from her injection sites. I don’t want her to be afraid to eat because of her blood glucose levels. Just like everything else, these advances require funding.
You can help by donation to our team here. Thank you for reading this.

A Door has Shut, Where’s the Window?

This week has been interesting in many ways for me. More specifically, Tuesday of this week was bittersweet. My newest e-book, Educating Macey, was released from Ellora’s Cave and my youngest daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The rest of the week is kind of a blur now, but I know I spent a little bit of time at work, a whole lot of time at the Texas Children’s Hospital in downtown Houston, and not enough time with my other three daughters. I spent basically no time writing or reading for pleasure. I did read quite a bit, but it was the same thing over and over as I tried to understand what is and isn’t happening in my child’s pancreas.

My mother has diabetes as well as a co-worker and other people I know. I didn’t panic when our pediatrician said we needed to head to the ER because my daughter’s sugar level was way too high. I though, “Okay. Diabetes, I can handle. I know some basics and it’s something we can deal with.”
Hah! I was seriously fooling myself and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that I realized just how naive I was being. Type 1, also called Juvenile, diabetes is nothing like my mother’s diabetes. It’s a completely different ailment and I didn’t even know it. Once I started reading and panic began to build, I realized we were in for the long haul. This is something we will monitor for the rest of her life. She’s currently seven years old.

I think I’ve always done well about seeing the glass as half full in every obstacle that comes our way. On Tuesday one of the first things I said to my husband was, “All right, the whole family is now going on a diet.” I was ready. I was willing to change the menus, throw out the junk and be stricter on the eating habits of all four children. That’s not going to be enough. There has to be a schedule for meals and insulin injections. I had to learn to stick a needle in my child’s body…multiple times a day! Thank god she’s such a brave little thing because she’s handling this better than I am. As I was ready to completely lose it on Thursday evening, I happened to talk to an acquaintance who’s child has Lupus. That conversation reminded me that I’m not the only mother going through this. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last. I am one of many and it IS doable. A door has shut on one chapter of our lives, but the family is now ready to crash through a window and let the fresh air back in.