Growing up in the 50's and 60's, I kept a keen eye on my mother, a "juvenile diabetic", whose control was legendarily erratic. There was barely a week that went by when I wasn't at Mom's side, forcing sugar-laced orange juice down her throat. When she wasn't low, she was high. Very high. That was back in the day when meters were the stuff of fantasy, and one peed on a stick to check levels. From the time I could count, I could detect Mom's "lows" from across a crowded room.
Diabetes continued rearing is head: in the late 1970's, my beloved cousin Colette was diagnosed T-1. As if she, already dealing with Downs Syndrome, didn't have enough on her plate. Technology was some better by then, but not by much.
In the late 80's, my amazing mother-in-law, Charlotte was found to have T-2 added to her long laundry list of dangerous conditions.
Flash forward to 2006, my mom has long since passed (1976 at age 38 of d-related complications), Colette and Charlotte are gone, and our youngest child is diagnosed with T-1 after a series of misdiagnoses.
It's easy to get flipped out about such things when you've time and again seen the havoc this condition can wreck.
Let's face it...this diabetes business is still a Big Time Major League Pain in the Butt. No doubt about it. It never freaking ends!
But it's also a different time and place. And there are treatment protocols that beat the pants off peeing on a stick.
There's reason to be hopeful (while simultaneously cursing off the greediness of a pharma industry gone wild).
I'm a T-4 diabetic - the daughter, cousin, daughter-in-law and mother of T-1's and a T-2. There's not an hour of any day when I'm not focused in some way on diabetes. I'd give anything to switch places so that the endless highs/lows/needles were mine and not theirs.
Until a cure, I'm here for support and friendship, to give and to receive, to learn and to share.
I'm so very grateful for this place, its people, and its promise!