Brittle

I learned a new diabetic term recently.

I am always sorry to hear that there are more diabetic terms that I have not heard before. To me, that means that there are things I don't know, might never know, or might not ever want to know about diabetes.

The term I learned is "brittle diabetic".

A brittle diabetic is one whose blood sugars are especially difficult to control.

I have often wondered about this.

It seems that, so far, M's blood sugars are usually somewhat predictable. Not always, but usually if we have a really high or really low number there is some rhyme or reason to it. And it's usually something that we can figure out, as long as M is cooperative and truthful during the figuring process.

But I had noticed that some of my students seemed to have a greater number of highs than she. That the highs seemed far more unpredictable than hers.

Of course, being a smug diabetic mom, I at first thought that perhaps my students were just not as good at managing their diabetes as my little angel.

But it does seem to me that some people just have better luck than others.

Then I read about Miranda. Miranda was a young woman who died from complications from Type 1 diabetes.

My mother made the acquaintance of Miranda's mother through work. Of course they went through that weirdly comforting "You too?" of diabetes connectedness, and then Miranda's mom shared a book that she had written about her daughter's painful journey through diabetes. In it, the book discusses the fact that Miranda was a "brittle diabetic."

Oddly, the book says that Miranda found the diagnosis liberating: she realized that her crazy bg levels were not her fault.

In life, I have often told myself that it could be worse. That someone out there has it worse than I do. It is both horrifying and comforting. It also helps me to pull myself up, realizing that there are people out there with way bigger problems who not only survive, but find joy in every day.

I know that I am not the only one who functions in this way.

Once I went swimming at the house of a friend of a friend. She and I had both, long ago, suffered second-trimester miscarriages (also known as still births). With years between our shared experience and the day of our discussion, we talked about how we felt at the time.

I said that I always felt lucky, because I had not had a child before the miscarriage, and I really didn't know what a true loss it was: something I would have surely known if I had experienced childbirth previously.

My companion looked me right in the eye and said, "Now isn't that weird. I felt lucky that at least I had had a child before, and that the loss would have been greater if I hadn't."

So, while I am saddened, and often exhausted by living with Type 1. While I fear, on some level, for my daughter's life every day, I have to count my blessings yet again.

She's not brittle.

My baby is strong.

Just keep moving. It will get better!