Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Good friends, Bad friends

Along the journey through teenhood, every child likely has to face some decision making regarding her friends. Do I still hang around with that guy who smokes? That girl who is so boy crazy that she'll probably end up pregnant before she's 16?

My reply has always been: If you find them to be valuable, and you are bringing them up, rather letting them bring you down, I will not interfere. After all, we have all made mistakes, and sometimes a good friend helps us to see the better path. Who am I to judge?

Well, now. Let's throw diabetes into the mix, and what constitutes a "good" friend and a "bad" friend changes. A good friend never makes his friend feel like diabetes is a burden to him when hanging out with him. He is curious about the disease and what to do if there is an emergency.

But as I peruse the assortment of friends that M and some of my students have asmassed, I realize that friends can have a strong influence on a teen's desire and ability to manage the disease.

M has a friend who is a lovely young lady. But every time M returns from an overnight excursion at this friend's house, her bg levels are out of whack: usually very high. M says that when she and this friend are together, they are "too busy" for her to check her bg levels or measure her food intake. So she routinely comes home with a bg of 330 or higher.

How does a parent handle a stituation like this? The friend is not encourging M to do anything illegal, immoral, or outwardly dangerous, like hitchhiking. But she is, consciously or not, discouraging her from doing something healthy. After all, not treating yourself for diabetes can be just as dangerous as using ilicit drugs, couldn't it?

So why would a friend of a diabetic NOT encourage her friend to take care of herself? There are, of course myriad reasons: 1) the friend forgets that her companion has diabetes 2) the friend does not know how dangerous diabetes is 3) the friend thinks that squeezing blood out of your finger at the dinner table is "icky" 4) the friend can't deal with the seriousness of the disease 5) the friend is always in a hurry to do the next thing, and the diabetic child does not want to "be a pain".

The fifth answer is a big one. M doesn't want to make a big deal about her diabetes. I believe that she thinks that a night of high bgs is worth a visit to her friend's house. Not good, but understandable.

But then she has other friends, just a few, who stay on top of it, and ask questions about the disease. These friends demystify the disease and are not afraid of it. When M is with these friends, her bg is much closer to her target level when she returns from a visit.

I can't blame the friends themselves. M, after all, is the one who needs to make sure that she is in control of her diabetes. I cannot put that kind of burden on other 15-year-old girls, who are mostly dreaming about the clueless boys in their biology class.

I can't help but wish for a special kind of friend for M: the kind of friend I like to call the diabetes hero friend. It seems to me, however, that it is mostly boys who have this type of friend.

The diabetes hero friend knows what a high blood sugar is, what a low blood sugar is, and frequently has exciting stories that go with that knowledge. I hear stories from these boys about climbing trees to get their delusional-super-high-blood-sugared companions down to the ground and to safety. They have injected their friends with both insulin and glucagon (at different times, obviously) They laugh about their diabetic friends going into diabetic rages while driving the car with a high blood sugar. And they tell the tale of how they took the wheel from their friend and got them to the side of the road without injury.
Diabetes hero friends know what to do in an emergency!


I once had a diabetes hero friend tell me that if our country ever really wants to win a war, it should put diabetics with high blood glucose levels on the front lines, because they are "crazy angry", and "don't feel pain."

When I tell someone that I have a child with type 1 diabetes, I have real respect for people who say, "I know what you mean, my best friend growing up had diabetes", because that usually means that they have a pretty intimate knowledge of the disease and its consequences. And some wild stories to go with it.

Of course, to have a diabetes hero friend with stories, one must have reasons to be rescued.

Fortunately for M, that has not yet happened.

So, I suppose I will settle for a few friends that ask M if she should eat that, or if she needs to check her bg. Even if she gets tired of hearing it, at least she'll know that they care.

And that they are trying to be good friends.

Good friends are worth their weight in insulin.

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