Sunday, November 05, 2006

A Lifetime of Diabetes.... Photo Gallery

This is a beautiful and poignant scrolling photo gallery dedicated to Type 1 Diabetes. Check it out. This one hits home....

Teresa Ollila's photo project

When I view these photos, in my eyes I feel tears, and hammering against my skull are a mad flock of question marks. Why? Why do these children have to go through this? Why did my child end up with this disease? It doesn't run in our family, it came out of the blue. It just hit us like the proverbial ton of bricks. Look at the sweet faces and look what these children have to do, just to stay alive. Why? WHY, GOD, WHY? WHY MY SON? WHY??????

In some ways diabetes is all our son has ever known. He doesn't remember much about life before diabetes. (He was diagnosed at age 7.) But I do.

It's just a tiny thing, but he doesn't sleep over at other children's houses. I wouldn't expect nor trust other parents to test his blood sugar in the middle of the night, or bring down a monster high, or hear the little voice coming from the next room ("I'm low") and rush in to do a test and find a 47 on the meter (for the blessedly uninitiated, normal blood sugars are 80-120... 47 is pretty darned low, in the danger [of seizure, coma, or death] territory) and madly pour juice down his throat. I can't ask them to correctly measure and dose insulin for all he eats.

He has friends sleep over here instead. It's enjoyable but he knows he's different.

Then again, we all have our burdens, don't we? I have friends dealing with children with severe autism, children who need liver transplants, I know families dealing with fatal childhood cancers. So, I guess, in some ways we are lucky. The 354 staring at me from the meter doesn't tell me so. So, it's another one of those nights, bide my time for the next several hours, watch the time tick away and poke, poke, poke into the night, until a realistic bedtime number is reached... I'd be ecstatic with a 180, tell ya the truth. And then, it's that half-sleep where I wonder whether, once again, I'll hear that little peep from next door... "I'm low..." And God bless those two words, because without them, there'd be a seizure, or worst....

Guess I'm not in a very happy mood. But do, go ahead and view those pictures. They say a picture tells a thousand word story-I think that is quite true in this case.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things I can
And the Wisdom to know the difference


:)