Fathers Day is this month, so it's time to talk about DADS!!! Are you a dad with diabetes? Do you have a dad with diabetes? Are you the dad of a kid with diabetes? Or a kid with diabetes who has a dad?
Share your Dad Stories and give your Dad Props in the discussion below OR write a blog and share the link to it in the discussion so we can all have a look.
Here's the link to a blog I wrote about my dad.
My dad is near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately, I'll be out of town on Father's Day, but we've got a special bond.
I grew up with my dad being a type I diabetic. It wasn't out of the ordinary to see all the lancets and syringes. I knew the smell of insulin well. I also knew his story, but when I started having similar symptoms (the weight loss, the thirst, the craving of sugar), I fought the diagnosis tooth and nail. I was formally diagnosed as a type I diabetic on January 3rd of this year after being informally diagnosed on December 23rd, 2011. My dad has been my rock through it all and while I know he feels guilty for passing this disease onto me at times, I don't see it as being his fault. I knew growing up I had a 6% chance. What I didn't know was exactly how hard this was. My dad was always a person first and I hope to be able to become that soon enough because right now I feel like I'm a walking blood sugar reading. Haha. The question of "how are you?" instantly makes me look down at my Dexcom, but my father doesn't let diabetes define him. Growing up, he'd be the first one to eat half of a pizza or a huge slice of cake. He never told me his blood sugar numbers, although I knew what he acted like when he was low and could tell when he was grumpy that his numbers were high. He didn't let it slow him down and I hope to get to a point where I can take my numbers with a grain of salt and know that they're just numbers... They're not me.
That being said, he has not always been the most disciplined diabetic, but he's there to remind me to breathe when I'm panicking over the fact that one piece of pizza that I bolused for shot me up to 200 or when I hear the ignorant comments about being "too young" to have diabetes or being "too skinny" to have gotten it. My dad is 54 years old and to date hasn't had any diabetes complications. Here's hoping to a complication-free rest of his life and for my own good health in the future. I can't imagine becoming diabetic without having a fellow diabetic for support, and I'm so happy to be blessed with someone who can make me see diabetes as character building rather than a flaw.
last year, Manny posted this discussion about Father's Day
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/topics/happy-day-to-all-the-fathers
when I was looking at the pictures he took at this year's ADA Scientific Sessions, one reminded me of Manny's dad (maybe it's the similar glasses)
http://www.tudiabetes.org/photo/proud-of-the-big-blue-test-poster
Mon papa!
My Dad. My dad was a rock. He rarely ever lost his temper. I can only remember him loosing it because someone wronged one of us boys not when we did wrong. If you found yourself on my dads bad side it was because you had done something wrong not because he was annoyed with you and you knew it because that's the way he was.
My dad showed no anger and rarely showed affection but you knew he cared because of the hardship he endured for us. He poured his life into raising me and my three brothers to be the honorable men we all turned out to be. He is what I have patterned my life after.
I lost my dad from cancer long before I was afflicted with T2 diabetes but had he still been alive he would have been the well from which I would have gone to draw strength.
My dad never openly said I love you but he didn't have to he said so with his actions. He served us well while he was with us and I still miss him very much.
Thank You Dad
Gary
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to ALL DADS out there....and ALL DAD-LIKE ♥
♥ Our son and his wee son shaving ♥
Caleb's dad is making it possible for me to serve on the BOD of DHF. Without his support and commitment to taking everything over when I travel for meetings throughout the year, I wouldn't be able to do it! I'm late to reply because of the craziness around here with end of school year insanity. Caleb's dad spent his evening on the ball field coaching Caleb's team to the championship tonight!
Gary, this is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.
"Character-building" it most certainly is! My parents and I used to joke "enough with the character-building, I've got all the character I want right now!"
Holy moley, you guys. I'm so loving the stories and photos!
Definitely a Kodiak moment. Cool picture.
Thanks :) Taken by our daughter-in-law! Our son had "frozen" for the pic....it was only taking on the task of getting the 2 year old in the moment...easier said than done! The little monkey is now 4!
Next week our weekly live interview on TuDiabetes is with MY DAD!!! Please join us to talk about his experiences raising a kid with type 1 diabetes (me) in the 1970s and -80s.
My Dad was a hard worker. I remember him maintaining the house, helping with the heavy housework, mending our shoes, and most of all I remember his garden. My Dad grew lovely flowers and tended his lawn carefully. He also grew all our vegetables, oh the joy of picking peas and sitting on the lawn with a colander to shell them for dinner. I am still searching for the taste of the vegetables of my childhood, alas the gardening genes were not handed down to me.
Linda, your papa looks to be a lovely man.
My dad had two diabetics. Myself (T1) beginning in 1962 and my mother (T2) in 1964. It was a lot to deal with and he was an overprotective rock. My mother had a much harder time with her T2 then I did. Then she had breast cancer. He stayed by her side for over 40 years, thinking of her first.
Dad passed away in 2010. His birthday is June 13th, so Father's Day was always a trip home for the birthday and Father's Day. I miss him every day.
I will celebrate Father's Day, 2013. My father lived a long life despite his having five autoimmune diseases -- actually, the same ones that I have. The condition that hit him the hardest was Pernicious Anemia. Here is an excerpt from my blog, "A Walk in the Park":
"When my father had it (Pernicious Anemia), no one knew how to treat it other than with eating liver and taking taking blood transfusions, and it was always fatal in the end. There was liver on our family table every night, with onions, without onions, liver. The people where he worked went to the hospital and gave blood for him, again and again. Still he wound up in the hospital, dying. Then magic--that hospital's first liquid B12 arrived for an injection, the first they ever gave, and it saved my father's life. Now a normal liver stores B12 for five years, so they thought if he took it every five years, he'd be fine. No--if you have PA, you don't store B12, you've got to inject it every two weeks or so, so some more drama and dying until they figured it out. Fast forward to me sitting in my doctor's office, weak and debilitated, and my doctor walked in and said, "You've got Pernicious Anemia." I fainted, falling off my stool. He caught me and said, "But if you've got to have a chronic disease, it's a good one!" OK, not too bad--I have some neuropathy, and I have to take HcL and enzymes with meals, but it's not terminal any more. (Well, neither is Diabetes.)"
My father had a family of six to pay the bills for while being so week and sick: my mother, maternal grandparents, my little brother and myself. He did it, he paid those bills against all odds. My mother was so supportive of us all; in fact, the only one of us who was not sick was my brother. The example my father (and mother) set for me are priceless. I am so lucky, because my husband is just as hardworking as my father and just as supportive as my mother. Happy Family Day!
Dad with diabetes (T1), daughter with diabetes (T1), father with diabetes (T2). Blog link here - appreciate the many lessons my dad taught me and the role model he has been - hoping to be the same for my kids. Father's Day blog linked below...hope all the dads had a great day!
http://victriabetes.blogspot.com/2013/06/thank-you-dad.html