Day one

Last week was one of those rare times when my wife and I both were able to go with my daughter for her quarterly visit to her diabetes doctor. Usually only one of us goes and it’s often a struggle remembering and relating exactly what the doctor had to say, or better yet what my daughter actually told him! But as luck would have it a phone call kept me sidelined in the waiting room after all; at least we could discuss the visit while it was still fresh on her mind. Annual blood work would accompany this visit as well, so I was just glad to be there anyway.

As I sat in the waiting room I couldn’t help but think about just how far we’ve come since her initial diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes almost five years ago. To say we’ve come instead of she’s come may sound strange to some, but any parent of a child with a lifelong and incurable disease will understand. When she was first diagnosed at 10 years of age I could hardly bear to let her out of my sight. When she went back to school I met her in the nurse’s office every day before lunch to help her test and give her her shot. I did this for almost six months. She didn’t need me as much as I needed to be there. If she had to do this, the least I could do was be there.

Of course my daughter is the one with the real job. She has to constantly test her blood sugar, count (and guess) carbs and take injections of insulin seven days a week, 365 days a year, for the rest of her life. We had to wait a year after her diagnosis before she got an insulin pump; it is important that diabetics know how to take care of themselves the “old fashioned way” before they are allowed this luxury. It’s akin to survival training. But really all the pump does is deliver the insulin without having to take a shot. She still has to draw blood, test her blood sugar and interpret the results. The pump is connected by a slender IV line to a short needle that stays under her skin for 3-4 days before it must be changed. This is a fragile, expensive, battery powered device that she depends on for survival.

But not only has she survived, she has thrived. She is a virtual dictionary of carbohydrate numbers and a master manipulator of the pump itself. She does whatever she wants to whenever she feels like it. She’s been away to camps and vacationed at the beach with friends; she is by all appearances a normal teenager. Do I still worry about her when she is out of my sight? Do I worry as I watch her eat something that I know she probably should not? Do I look her in the eyes and try to guess her blood sugar? Well, of course, and I probably always will. But I keep these things to myself; she is first and foremost a teenager. Knowing how far she has come in these five long years makes me swell with pride as I write this now!

 I decided that I had been sitting in the waiting room for far too long when the door to the patient rooms opened. I placed the magazine back on the table, but before I could stand and hold the door for my wife and daughter, I realized that it was not them after all. Standing in their place was a little girl; pig tails and a dress, every bit of four years old. Around her neck was the strap of a pink camouflage canvas lunch box that I knew all too well. It contained the “starter kit” of test meter, syringes and a bottle of insulin given as a sample by the doctor’s office and drug companies.

The parents quickly caught up with the little girl as they crossed the room and headed for the front door. But before they could exit the building her father gave me a quick glance that erased the comfort I had begun to feel over the last five years. Day one for another family.