This is why I write about diabetes...

Nora age 11 dx'd 6.13.05 at age 4

Meet my daughter Nora. She is a VERY active 11 year old. She is a competitive gymnast, basketball and softball player. She would be involved in everything if I let her and if her schedule allowed it!! She has Type 1 diabetes. She was diagnosed at 4 years old. She had had walking pneumonia a few months before diagnosis and I believe this virus is what triggered her diabetes.

 I watched her hands physically shake as she screamed she was hungry in the mornings...this was her low. I watched her down 20oz Dasani water bottles like a college aged kid chugging down a beer bong...this was her high. I waited, sometimes impatiently, as she ran to the bathroom too many times to count...again, she was high. I had heard about diabetes but NEVER what it meant. For some reason I called her pediatrician and said I need to have my daughter tested for juvenile diabetes. I have NO reason for why I picked this disease...again, I knew nothing of it. Got her in the next day, sugar present in her urine which landed us in Cincinnati Children's Medical Hospital Center for 5 days. While the staff gave us a crash course on how to save our daughter's life with daily injections of insulin.

Enduring the cries, screams and yells of pricking fingers every 3 hours...sometimes more. The insulin injections and now the insulin pump sites that leave enough of their mark to make her legs, arms and belly look like a connect the dot puzzle. Answering the question of a then 10 year  old on how she thinks she will die...be it by the hand of diabetes or old age. The overwhelming security she feels when her big sister, who is months shy of 18, moves into her bedroom so that when her CGM alarms, can run downstairs to get me if the baby monitor doesn't pick it up for me to hear. An 11 year old who fears she will NEVER wake up because of an overnight low that goes undetected.

And yet through all this, Nora is a funny, loving, light-hearted, caring 11 year old!! Diabetes has made her sensitive to other people and their health issues. It's made her grow up way too early...she is an old soul. While this is all great and good, diabetes has robbed her of her childhood. And for that I HATE it! It's this hate for diabetes and the love I have for my daughter that fuels me to advocate, fight and raise awareness for diabetes.

This, my friends, is why I write about diabetes.