I was watching Nightly News this week and was absolutely riveted by this story about how this children’s hospital in Providence RI says “night night” to their patients
Watching this story brought back lonely, frightening and sad memories of my 2 weeks in Children’s National Medical Center 50 years ago. The hospital was not near where we lived in Alexandria VA and I don’t remember having many visitors, just my mom.
Anyway, I love this. Maybe I’ll re-program my memories and make this what happened when I was in the hospital in 1967.
I remember a negative message I received when I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 51 years ago. I had been in the local hospital for three days, where my parents visited me every day, and then I went away to the Joslin Clinic in Boston, where I saw my mother only very briefly every morning during the week of diabetes instruction classes we both participated in. After not spending much time with her for several days, I was finally allowed to spend some time with her in the hospital hotel she was staying in, and I was shocked to find her treating me like a stranger. I realized then that, because I had become some freakishly diseased creature rather than the perfect son she had hoped for, I had become a burden rather than a joy, and there would from now on be an unavoidable distance between us. Until she died, we never overcame this gulf that diabetes had opened.
I’m so sorry @Seydlitz. My dad told me before he died that he felt somewhat hesitant to become as close as we could have because he was sure I was going to die an early death. We were able to become close in the last 5 or so years of his life. (I was also helped enormously by another TuD member @SEAGATOR1, my dad’s age — miss you so much Reed!).
It was another time, people weren’t so open about medical conditions. It was a lonely time to have diabetes. I am thankful for having found TuDiabetes 10 years ago, it’s been a refuge for me. sending you some healing thoughts…
My dad (also Type 1) died when he was 40. Once I was old enough to understand that diabetes was the cause I never thought I would live past 40. Fortunately I’m now 44 and in recent years have come to terms that I will probably live much longer than my dad since the medical science and technology is much better than 40 years ago.
