There was some news this week in the diabetes community and there have been mixed reactions. Some are excited, hopeful and encouraged. Others are frustrated, disheartened and even resentful.
I am a little of both. I am cautiously optimistic. That’s how I am in general, and I am the same as it relates developments in diabetes research and potential advances.
A friend blogged about her sadness regarding the outlook for a cure for diabetes after hearing the reactions from others to this week’s news. The fact that a time frame of five to ten years for a cure has been given to people diagnosed with diabetes for tens of years was a little more than discouraging. I understand and relate to this.
This is my reply to Rachel:
I don’t think people are made much more skeptical than I am. I have this book which dedicates a page to every day of the year and describes what people are like based upon the day of the year they were born. My day is called “The day of the hard look”. It defines me perfectly – anyone who knows me is fascinated at the eeriness of the accuracy of this book as it relates to me.
That being said, I have hope.
I don’t really understand why people (doctors) need to define a time frame to this. I suppose it’s because it’s something we all want to hear. Giving it definition when it is IMPOSSIBLE to define is what makes this situation that we are in. Once the measurement is defined, we have something to look at and say, “well that didn’t work – they were wrong – they lied – it WON’T happen.”
But I haven’t given up. The time frame may be wrong, but the theory, I believe, is right.
There ARE resources – many resources – tasked to tackle this. I don’t have the slightest clue when their efforts will be realized, but I truly believe they will be. It may be 100 years from now, it may be 10. But I believe this puzzle will be solved.
None of us are sitting around waiting for a cure. We are all doing everything we can to keep ourselves or our kids healthy now.
I think of the people who lived with diabetes in the early 1900s who starved themselves to live another day, every day, in hope of a cure. The cure came for many of them. It was insulin. It saved their lives.
Now I am NOT saying that insulin is a cure, because I know darn well that it is not. But for these people it might as well have been. From their perspective it was.
I hate what diabetes does and makes us all do as much as anyone. But, I am so very, very thankful (ok, I’m choking up now) that Caleb has the benefit of the advancements that exist today. Even on the worst of days, when I don’t think I can take another second of the crap that diabetes presents us, I remind myself it could be so much worse.
I don’t know when there will be a cure, but I am still hopeful.
More than that, I am hopeful that along the way there will be many more advancements that will make living with diabetes easier and safer. If there are as many in the next 10 years as there were in the last 10 years, living with diabetes in 2020, when Caleb is just 17, will be a very different thing than it is today.
I have read a lot of the responses to Wednesday’s news and appreciate the varying perspectives that have been shared. Although different, and at times at opposite ends of the spectrum, I am able to relate to most of them.
I am “the day of the hard look”. No one who knows me would argue this. But I am still optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nevertheless.
