Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

The Great Spousal Unit and I attended an open house for Type 1s at the local JDRF headquarters this week. It’s important for me to go to these things, in part because I’ve been feeling very anti-real-life meeting lately, if that makes any sense. There’s not a good reason for that. It’s just that mostly, at the gatherings I’ve been attending, I’m the oldest person in the room. Sometimes by a lot. And as you probably know, sometimes, if people can’t immediately identify with you, they don’t want to talk to you.

So I dragged the spouse to this get-together. She wasn’t feeling too good that day, but I figured if I could get her to come, I’d have at least one person to talk to all night.

You know what? We both had a great time. We didn’t get to talk to a lot of people, but the conversations we had were meaningful. I saw someone I recognized from mentor training a few months back. We spoke to a mom whose kid was diagnosed not too long ago.

That last conversation was particularly poignant for TGSU. She got to hear, maybe for the first time, someone talking about nighttime BG checks, packing diabetes supplies as well as books and pencils for school, and managing pump settings for an active summer instead of desk-bound school days.

On our way out, we passed by her child and a couple of other kids that were there, who were drawing designs on balloons (and using the name tags from the event to write “Free Balloon” on each one—wish I had gotten a photo of that) and handing them to people as they left.

On the way home, Maureen was feeling a lot better. And she admitted to a new understanding (and perhaps empathy?) for parents of CWD (Children With Diabetes) and their never-ending labor of love for their children. All I could think of was how great it is that that kid seems to be living the kind of life they’re meant to live, even with diabetes along for the ride.