Diabetes - Entwined

It is time to discuss being all grown up with diabetes.

I have had Type 1 diabetes since the eighties, yes the Big Hair, Glam, Dancing on The Ceiling era.

 I was nine when diagnosed, so I was dancing to thriller with my cousin not realising what a life with diabetes would entail.

When you are a young person your view of the world is idealistic not to generalize, but this is what my view of the world was. You dream, you picture what your life will be like when you are all grown up.

You envision a life full, happy, stress free.  You over hear discussions about money, mortgages, but this to you as a child sounds like another language, because it doesn`t apply to you. 

You go where your parents go, take your insulin, eat whats prepared for you and play, imagine and enjoy life, not thinking about diabetes.

You celebrate numerous birthdays, and with each passing birthday, the awareness starts to gradually manifest itself. The awareness that this diabetes thing is here to stay. You fight, deny, then hopefully accept, or at least allow it to sink in fleetingly through-out your youth.

You complete your elementary, middle and high school. You make some big decisions like, what am I going to do with my life now? 

You fall in love, finish more education or choose a field to pursue. Life goes on, and diabetes is always present.

You marry, and have children or not.

You work, save, buy your first home, apartment or condo or not.

You have many more birthdays. You reach middle age. You reflect, and all this time diabetes lingers; you need to renew your drivers licence, have regular check-ups, finger pokes, infusion sets, injections, pens, new devices, promises about cures and transplants, yet, diabetes is still entwined as part of you.

You look back, at chapter one, you look forward to chapter two.  What`s in store; will I avoid complications, will there be a cure, will they close the loop?

Then I think, will my children with type 1 diabetes have to endure the same life journey with diabetes that I have?

They are being entwined as I was with diabetes, I pray and hope they endure.

Trev