Friday, March 18, 2005

In The Good Old Bad Old Days

I blogged here (and thanks for the reply, Lori!) about a friend of mine whose son recently had a diabetic seizure. ANOTHER friend of mine's son had a diabetic seizure this week, too. Several of us got to talking and someone told us that "in the old days"~this was before the days of insulin pumps and relatively stable long-acting insulins such as Lantus~kids would have 4 or more seizures... EACH NIGHT.

FOUR OR MORE SEIZURES A NIGHT.

My God, can you imagine what that was like for the parents? For the KIDS?

Well, it put things in perspective at least. Seizures are certainly less common among diabetics these days~though they do happen, of course, as my two friends' experiences show. Given the choice, I'd do away with this disease altogether~but barring that, I'm just so glad for all the advances that have been made in recent years.

My son's decided he wants to be a pediatric endocrinologist when he grows up. His friends want to be football players and rock stars, but he is determined to help other kids with diabetes. "And if they cure diabetes before I'm a grown-up, Mom," he said, wiping the shiny red droplet from his finger onto a tissue as he watched the Freestyle meter count up the glucose numbers, "I'm going to be a hematologist. Because I'm not afraid of blood. Not at all."