The Land Before Diabetes

Today is Day 19 of the Health Activist Writers Month Challenge

Today’s challenge: Vintage – Post a vintage photo of yourself, with a caption about the photo and where you were in terms of your health condition.

I don’t have any vintage photos handy of me as a child. If I did I would caption it with “No clue” because as a child I would never have thought that I would be the mother of two kids with diabetes. My kids aren’t old enough for any of their pictures to be “vintage” but thanks to Instagram and filters I can make some of my favorite pre-diabetes photos look vintage.

bphoto — My dearest Sweetstuff – 2 1/2 years old. No idea that in 7 short years she will be diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and her life will become more complicated than tickle wars and play dough creations.

cphoto — My Sugarboy on his 1st birthday. In another year and half he will be diagnosed with Type 1. He doesn’t remember a time he was able to dig into birthday cake without checking a blood sugar and dosing insulin.

xphoto — This was Christmas Eve 2006. The last Christmas before diabetes moved in. Sugarboy was dxd just over a month later. Although he had been showing some signs at this point (more sleepy and a little more thirsty) although we didn’t see the signs yet. Decorating the cookies on Christmas Eve with our santa hats is a tradition. We still do it every Christmas Eve – screw you diabetes.

To be honest this post was hard. It meant looking through files of photos of my kids when they were little and carefree. It meant remembering times when life was so much simpler and my biggest concern was if I had all the outlets covered and poisonous cleaners locked away – you know to keep my kids alive. In a blink of an eye my worries about keeping my kids alive changed to counting carbs and checking blood sugars in the middle of the night.

After I searched for photos of my kids pre-diabetes I looked at photos post-diabetes. Yup – my kids are still happy. They still ride bikes, eat cake, swim, learn, and laugh. Life has changed for us all but it hasn’t changed how we all love life.