Diabetes doesn’t discriminate against age, race, gender, pre-existing disabilities or any other differences we may have. It just sucks for everyone! And one of those people that it sucks for is my son, Henry.
Henry, as I write this, is eight years old. He loves soccer, reading books and watching his list of “old” ’90s movies. To sum it up, he is one of the coolest people I know. He also carries the weight of managing type 1 diabetes.
This Friday, Nov. 14, is World Diabetes Day — a globally recognized day to bring awareness to a very serious condition, one that affects the body’s ability to produce insulin from an organ called the pancreas. The pancreas is a real benchwarmer of a body part unless it decides to stop making insulin, then it becomes the star player very quickly. Without insulin, our bodies can’t absorb glucose, and our bodies need glucose to make energy. Like a car needs gas.
Henry wears an insulin pump, which can sometimes be confused for a gigantic pager. It looks as if he’s some boy genius, who needs to remain on-call at all times in case the world needs saving; when actually, it’s a mechanical organ! So, Henry is also part robot. (See? He’s pretty cool!) Henry carries around emergency candy for when his blood sugar gets too low. And he always has cool band-aids handy in case anybody needs one.
I want to share all of this with you, with Henry’s permission, because every day is diabetes day in our house. It was a real life changer of a diagnosis and it’s taken a while to balance things. It’s hard enough to be eight years old, but even harder when there’s so much to care for. Diabetes is the constant background noise in our otherwise pretty sweet life.
If you or someone you know has an insulin pump, cool band-aids or emergency candy, perhaps think of them kindly for a moment on Friday. You could even wear royal blue, which is the official color of diabetes. Or maybe remind yourself that you never quite know what invisible challenges someone is going through. Happy World Diabetes Day to everyone!
— Shannon Hart, native Vermonter, mother of two, graphic designer at the Addison Independent