Who I Relate To

I often wonder why I relate to D-moms as much as I do. Just reading their child’s diagnosis story online, I am almost always choking back tears. But I don’t have a child with Diabetes. I couldn’t possibly know what it is like to have to inflict pain on your little loved one over and over as they scream at you telling you not to do it.

But I do relate to the parents. It’s now their new normal; my new normal. Sure, I have been dealing with this since I met Vince, 11 years ago, but it feels like a “newly diagnosed” situation to me. Although I have been dealing with this for 11 years now, I do not think it was until his complications arose that I put much thought into it. All of the sudden, it went from being in the background, to now, being in my face 24 hours a day. Now, I think about his sugars not only when he might be high or low, but what effect it is having on him. A high means more pain than he is already having. Or a few days of bad highs could cause his eyes to be in jeopardy even more since the retinopathy is present. Then I might see him have a low. A low has more immediate effects, but you still think about how it might be affecting his body long term, to have these constant highs and lows.

He now wears a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) He only began to wear this when he stopped feeling his lows. Yet another complication. He would pass out because he had no idea his sugar was so dangerously low. He even had a car accident due to not feeling the lows. So now he wears his CGM 24 hours a day. He never goes without it. It is a blessing to have access to this wonderful medical device. I have no idea where we would be without it. But, it is one more thing that was not present 11 years ago. One more thing that is a constant reminder of all of the complications.

The fact that I have to administer all of his injections (something fairly new for me in the grand scheme of things) is what makes that “newly diagnosed” feeling. These are things I have never had to do, before I met Vince and even after up until a few years ago. This is my new normal, just like the new normal a parent has when their child is diagnosed.