Taking Charge

When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. This diagnosis of course changed the course of my life forever but it also changed my family life growing up as a kid (not always for the better). I was child number 3 of 5 in my family and I still think that to this day the "extra" attention that I got from my parents having Diabetes was somewhat resented by my other siblings. Not that I really enjoyed this kind of extra attention.

I think my parents did a good job with helping to "train" me to live with my Diabetes. But at the time the notion was that "sugar was bad" prevalent and that everything had to be in a routine same time day after day. As a youth this was the biggest bummer of all. My parents were leery of letting me go to sleep overs, birthday parties and even going on my first date. They were going off of all of the data that the doctors, social workers and nurses were giving to us but I felt very singled out by the "rules".

In fact we even as a family lost some flexibility, based on thoughts from the Diabetic "handbook" meals had to be at the same time everyday. So everyday at 5:00pm my mom would serve diner. Some of the diabetic recipes were good but some of the good 'ole favorites were left off the menu. I felt like this was all due to the in-flexibility of the disease. Very rigid.

On one hand people would say that I am a normal kid and can do everything that everyone else could do. On the other hand I had all of these "rules" applied to me which did not make me feel very normal. I did have a good childhood, don't get me wrong but many questions in my mind were unanswered. Possibly because I did not bring them up. If I was just like every other kid then why did I feel like I had a different set of rules applied to me?

About the time I left home to go to College, I learned one very important thing. I was able to do everything that was asked of me from the doctors but with a simple change of attitude I was able to take control. Latest education on control of Diabetes from doctors were that sugar was not necessarily as bad but you had to control it. I figured that if this worked with the disease it would work with me. I learned to not let the disease control me but to control the disease. As long as I was in control I did not feel trapped by the disease. So instead of forcing myself to eat at 5pm everyday I ate when my schedule allowed and worked my insulin schedule around eating instead of working my schedule around my insulin. I felt renewed, invigorated able to take my schedule into my own hands (so to speak). Funny thing is that once I took this new found attitude the control of my diabetes actually improved. My H1C values actually got better.


Once I figured out how well this works I started applying this to the rest of my life. Don't let your ???? control you, rather control your ????. Career, love life, situations, it was amazing how easy it was to "take control". Carolyn and I fully believe in this method. When our first child was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis we applied the same principals to his care. When initially in the hospital we wanted to know everything and asked the doctors all of the tough questions. We got answers and started making choices on how to better care for him. We tended to want to be a little more aggressive than the doctors were (and still are for that matter). I feel like this has really helped their quality of life.