Good Grades

I am learning more about diabetic culture as I grow accustomed to parenting a child with Type 1 diabetes.

I personally know many kids with Type 1, not because I am part of some fabulous parent network, but because I teach high school. I have read that the typical child has a 1 in 500 ( 0.2%) chance of getting diabetes before he is an adult.

I  personally know 3 out of the 935 students (0.3%) in my high school that have Type 1. I am sure that I don't know every child with diabetes that attends my school. I only know the ones who have been in my class or the clubs that I advise. Even by my limited knowledge, I can tell that the four towns that send children to our school are "above average."

Regardless, just like kids with Type 1 might feel all alone in the world, so can parents of a child with Type 1 - especially if there is no history of Type 1 in the family. No history of Type 1 means that we are the appointed family pioneers of understanding this disease, and that when your aunt says, "Well, surely one little slice of fudge won't do much to her sugars. It's tiny." No one is there who understands what you are talking about when you tell them that "tiny" still needs a bolus  of insulin.

Before M was diagnosed, I knew of two people that had Type 1. They were two kids I knew growing up. I haven't seen them since high school. Now I wonder how they are doing. I wonder how it was back in the day, before all of the options that are available today.

Because of my sense of being somewhat alone in the daily battles with this disease, I will periodically chat with the aforementioned students and their parents about their experiences for comparison.

And then it rears its ugly head: the insecure mother. I mean me. I am sure others partake as well, but they are not obvious about it.

I can't say that I am overt. The parent of a healthy child might ask, "How is Sandra doing in Latin class?" so that she can gauge her own child's success level in Latin. I ask about diabetic numbers. M manages her diabetes well, so like the mother of a good student, I want to gauge exactly how well she is doing.

To my credit, the other parent usually asks me about M's A1Cs before I get around to asking about their child's.

The conversation usually starts with me saying something like, "I heard 'Frank' talking on the phone with someone saying that his bg was over 300. Does that happen a lot?"

Usually the other parent tells me that it is atypical, and that 'Frank' is excellent at managing his diabetes, whereupon I am asked about M's A1C count.

I contentedly boast that her A1Cs have been 6.4 or 6.5 for the last three quarters. Then I hear about the other child, whose numbers are around 7.0. Then I can contentedly sigh, thinking that M's numbers are better than someone's, and therefore she is okay.

Well, maybe a B+...

It's like being reassured that your child will likely be in the top 20% of her graduating class, and will likely get into a good college, except that this "good college" is a healthy adulthood.

This interaction is not nearly as gratifying with people who are unfamiliar with diabetes. My friends and family often ask me how M is managing her diabetes. These people love her, and they care about our family, but they don't understand the numbers I throw out at them.

I know where they are coming from. When May was in the hospital upon her diagnosis, I was told her bg level was 635 mg/dl. I knew that this number was bad, because of the way it was said to me. I knew that normal bg levels were in the neighborhood of 100, but still, how bad did it get? Was 600 REALLY AWFUL, or just merely "not good"? It took experience with the disease to really find out.

It's kind of like telling people in the US that it's 30 degrees centigrade. In the US, 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) is pretty chilly. People know that 30 in centigrade means something different, so they might ask, "That's hot, right?" It would take experiencing a 30 degree day for them to better understand what it meant.

So yeah, while I expect my daughter to get good grades, I rarely discuss them with other people. Instead I brag about her diabetes management; and in the process, I try to educate my loved ones about what all of these numbers mean. In the meantime, I can always grab parents of diabetic strangers off the street to compare notes, and hopefully to learn M's odds of getting into the good college of healthy adulthood.

One step at a time!