Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.HERE IS WHY IM DOING THIS.

For Joseph:

                                   Joseph’s story

 Type 1 Diabetes is a life threatening, autoimmune disease that permanently destroys beta cells in the pancreas, meaning the body no longer produces insulin. This insulin must be replaced in order to survive and can only be replaced through injections or an insulin pump.

 

On 13 August 2009 my son Joseph, who was 8 at the time, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and our lives changed forever.

In the couple of weeks leading up to his diagnosis, Joseph had not been himself. He was grumpy, lethargic, starving hungry but feeling sick then the drinking started, he would get up at night and drink from the bathroom tap and when he wasn’t drinking he was going to the toilet. This is when the alarm bells started to ring , I knew these were the symptoms of Type 1 so I took him to see our GP hoping that I was wrong. I wasn’t…..

We were sent straight to hospital where they confirmed Joseph had Type 1, his blood sugar was dangerously high and he had his first insulin injection. After this first injection I remember Joseph asking me if that was it, was he better now and I had to tell him that no he wasn’t better, he would have to have these injections and finger prick tests for the rest of his life….that is a hard thing to tell an 8 year old child.

We were only in hospital for a day, we were lucky, many children are only diagnosed with Type 1 when they are admitted to hospital unconscious in a Diabetic Ketoacidosis coma. In hospital we were taught how to test Jospeh’s blood sugar by pricking his finger and how to give him his insulin injections( 4 a day). Having to inject my own son is not something I had prepared myself for, it wasn’t in any of the parenting books I had read over the years nor was it in my training as a nurse. I cried hysterically after injecting Joseph for the first, he just looked at me saying ‘it’s ok mum, it didn’t hurt’.

Very quickly we had to learn about carbohydrates, blood glucose levels, high GI food, low GI food, hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar), hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar), the effects of illness/exercise, excitement/adrenaline on blood sugars. Joseph has had to learn this too.

Some 9000 finger pricks and over 2000 injections later Joseph now has an insulin pump and does everything that any other 11 year old does except he has to think about Diabetes before he does anything…..

He has to test his blood sugar before he eats anything, he has to work out the amount of grams of carbohydrate in the food, he has to think about the amount of exercise he has done or is about to do, he has to always carry his ‘hypo’ bag with him which contains his blood glucose meter and a couple of cans of coke.

At the age of 11 he knows that if he doesn’t treat a hypo he could become unconscious and even die, he also knows that without insulin he could not survive more than a couple of days. That is a heavy burden for an 11 year old child to carry.

The silver lining in the cloud that is Type 1 Diabetes, is the friendships that I have made with other parents of children with Type1. As a family, these friends are our lifeline and when we meet up it is so comforting to be with people who ‘get it’.  They are my ‘Diabetes Family’.

At a recent Children With Diabetes conference, a wonderful man called Tom Karlya said ‘ Diabetes just won’t do’…how very true. Hope is in a cure.

 Caryn Bishop, Mum

November 2012