One year
ago today our world was flipped upside down by the words: “Your son is
Type 1 diabetic.”
It is still
hard thinking back to that day without getting emotional. The innocence of me thinking it could never
happen to us and that it had to be a mistake.
Then the bitterness I felt, wishing it were someone else’s child, not
mine.
Now that we
have come to an acceptance, the hardest part to deal with is the constant
fear. The fear that we are trying to control a disease that does
not really want to be controlled. We are
always playing the numbers game where every decision we make we are always
seconding guessing what we are doing, . . . did we cover enough carbs? . . or too many? Are we limiting his sweets too much? . . . someday backfiring on us. How are his
friends going to accept his disease? . . . will he be invited to birthday
parties or even sleep overs? Not to mention the fear of limb amputation,
blindness, kidney failure or worse death . . . like the poor children we have
learned about though on-line Diabetes Forums since his diagnosis that have lost their
lives to the disease. The fear that there will never be a cure. This list
goes on and on. It is comforting to see
and hear that we are not alone. Every
parent of a Type 1 shares these fears.
Living to deal with them has been one of our biggest challenges. Each day does get easier and staying positive is not hard when you see how happy and full of love he is. It sure rubs off on us! I know everyone thinks their children are amazing but he truly is! ;-)
Since it is
his one-year anniversary we have decided to “celebrate” it. We went out to the restaurant
of his choice, Chuck E Cheese! You may wonder why we would celebrate such
a thing. But, we are not celebrating that he has diabetes. We are
celebrating that it hasn’t beaten him, or us! We are celebrating that
he’s living, breathing, and in our eye’s thriving! We are also celebrating that fact that even
though his diagnosis has been difficult to take many days, it has brought us
closer as a family. Things that would
have bothered us in the past no longer seem to matter. Our marriage and family are stronger then it
has ever been because we have learned to lean on each other in ways we have
never thought possible.
So, even though
we mourn what this day, November 7th has brought us, we are going to
celebrate all the wonderful things in our life.
Mainly HIM! He is a blessing in
more ways then we could ever imagine. He
continues to astound us with every aspect of this disease. I now know why God didn’t answer our prayers
of giving us the disease rather than him.
I know without a doubt he is the one in our family who can handle it and
will do amazing things with it . . . he already has!
The other the
thing we did last night was to help honor his day is we brought up two care
packages to the hospital where he spend five LONG days, when he was
diagnosed. We wanted to brighten the
life of a little boy and girl that was hospitalized and let them know we are
thinking and praying for them! Hopefully
we can keep these new traditions going!
God is good and we need to remember to thank him for all the wonderful
things he has given us! :-)
Here are some picture from our FUN night!
