In Which I Look at Diabetes from My Daughter's Perspective

Having a kid with diabetes is hard. There's no way to get around it. However, being a kid with diabetes does not always feel hard, at least according to Kittygirl. As a matter of fact, she sees some advantages to having diabetes. Today I'm taking a look at what diabetes looks and feels like from the perspective of an 8 year old.

Kittygirl has never expressed significant sadness over her diabetes diagnosis. She doesn't like it. She does sometimes reflect wistfully on the days when her pancreas made insulin. However, she generally just takes it in stride and looks for the positive.

From her perspective, having diabetes isn't all bad, and in fact sometimes it's pretty cool. For instance, if I have bolused her for food and she doesn't like what was served to her (she's notoriously picky), she doesn't just get told be eat it or be hungry, she has to eat something with approximately the same number of carbohydrates. At home we find something equivalent to what she didn't eat, but occasionally when we're out it might mean she gets candy instead of the snack she thought she wanted from the food truck.

Kittygirl now handles many diabetes tasks on her own, but, in first grade, she had to go down to the nurse every day before lunch. She was allowed to take one friend with her, and that made her a rock star. Our school nurse at the time was really cool, and the kids loved to hang out with her. Kittygirl literally kept a waiting list in her mind of whose turn it was to come with her before lunch.

Diabetes for Kittygirl means, among other things, getting to wear cute diabetes shirts and pump pouches with her favorite characters. It means sometimes eating Skittles or Smarties in class or getting extra time to finish her lunch at school even if she was talking when she was supposed to be eating (don't get me started on how ridiculously short the lunch break is at school).

It means attending a free local day camp one Saturday every fall for kids with diabetes. When she's ready (most likely this summer) it will mean the opportunity to attend a week long sleepaway diabetes camp, probably at a younger age than her brother was first allowed to attend a week long sleepaway camp.

Diabetes means extra treats and gifts because we celebrate Kittygirl's Diaversary (that's the anniversary of her diagnosis date for the uninitiated) in addition to her birthday. She was diagnosed the Sunday of Presidents Day weekend in 2017, and, for the past two years, we've spent the weekend in Columbus, Ohio. We make a visit to COSI, the best science museum ever, and she gets to get one of her dolls' hair styled at the American Girl store. None of this would happen if she didn't have diabetes.

Finally, Diabetes for Kittygirl means the opportunity to attend the Friends for Life conference. I shared about this amazing conference for people with T1D and their families earlier this week, so I won't rehash it. However, I want to emphasize here that it's one of her favorite things of all time and she has said that she doesn't really mind having diabetes because if she didn't she wouldn't get to go to FFL and would never have met her FFL buddy.

As a bonus, this year after FFL our family tagged on four days at Universal Orlando, which we had considered going to for years. Because we might have to leave the line to treat a high or low blood sugar, Kittygirl qualifies for the Attractions Assistance Pass, which allows us to get a return time for a ride with a long wait and enter via the express line when our return time is up.  This was the only reason our family was able to ride the new Hagrid roller coaster this summer, which typically had a 3 hour wait. From a parent's perspective, I don't recommend exchanging your child's working pancreas for a ride on it, amazing as it is, but it was pretty cool that Kittygirl's lack of a working pancreas allowed us the opportunity to ride after waiting in a line that was much, much shorter than 3 hours.

Not all kids view having T1D the way Kittygirl does. Some are very anxious about it and go through depression brought on by their condition. I think that is partly due to the fact that those kids are naturally more prone to anxiety. However, I think that sometimes it's because a parent's attitude toward the disease rubs off on the kid.

I do worry about Kittygirl's future and diabetes does cause me stress, but I don't emphasize those things with Kittygirl. What I emphasize is that diabetes will sometimes make her life more challenging, but it won't stop her from achieving her dreams. Along the way, it might also net her some extra candy and shorter lines at amusement parks. :)