Putting Diabetes In Its Place - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Run, Rabbit, Run

Posted on January 24, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Year of the Metal Rabbit — Image by OnTask via Flickr

January 1^st was a rotten time to make New Year Resolutions. The excitement of Christmas was over, the decorations were losing their charm, and the mornings and evenings seemed darker than ever. Relentless advertising for the post-Christmas sales rubbed in the fact that it was an awfully long time till payday. It’s no wonder that January 24^th was officially designated the most depressing day of the year. This January had only two highlights for me: the opportunity to write cheques dated 1/1/11 or 11/1/11 and, a week later, my birthday – though, goodness knows, the novelty of birthdays wore off for me a very long time ago. So this year I decided to be realistic about New Year’s Resolutions: I resolved not to make any.

But then, a few weeks into the New Year, something wonderful happened: I looked up into the sky at 5pm and realised it was not entirely dark. A tiny tinge of blue was still hovering behind the impending night sky, a promise of the spring to come. It was enough to make my personal sap begin to rise. Then I spotted in my diary the fact that we’re on the brink of Chinese New Year. We’re entering the Year of the Rabbit. It wasn’t too late to make those New Year Resolutions after all! Before I knew it, I found myself signing up to run the Bristol 10K. A leaner, faster, fitter new me is just around the corner of 2011…

But it won’t only be me that benefits. I’ll be fundraising for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Every £60 I raise will pay for an hour of research to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. This horrible disease has blighted the life of my husband and my small daughter, through no fault of their own. (Type 1 diabetes is not related to lifestyle choices). 100 years ago, their diagnosis would have been shortly followed by their death. Decades of research has made it possible to live with diabetes, provided you submit to constant and costly medical intervention, including multiple daily injections or the use of an infusion pump 24/7, plus half a dozen or more blood tests every single day. The next ambition of researchers is to make it possible for Gordon and Laura and millions like them to live without it. At present, there is no cure.

So, with my resolve strengthening as the daylight hours are lengthening, I’ve signed on the dotted line for the 10K charity run. I just wish I had a Chinese bank account. Because then, when I write the deposit cheque, I could take enormous pleasure in dating it for the first day of the Chinese New Year: Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits / Rabbit.

(This post was originally written for the February edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)

Family, Type 1 diabetes

Father’s Day to Follow

Posted on March 14, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Enjoying my Mother’s Day cup of tea in bed with my small daughter this morning, we discuss the nature of this event, once I have finished opening all my cards. I have just the one daughter, but she’s made enough Mother’s Day tributes tto serve a set of quins.

Never one to travel light, she has also brought into my bed three large teddy bears. These go by unusual names. Diabetic Bear was a helpful free gift from drug manufacturer Bayer to all newly diagnosed diabetic children, complete with colourful felt patches to indicate insulin injection sites. Romantic Bear sports a smart oriental karate outfit. Glowy lights up in the dark. Being slightly smaller than the other two, Glowy is introduced as the daughter of Diabetic Bear, who, because she is a wearing a dress, must be the mummy. I query whether Romantic Bear is therefore Glowy’s daddy.

“No, not yet,” replies Laura, introducing a whole new notion of the family dynamic. “But he might get married to Diabetic Bear this afternoon.”

How many marriages would be saved if the mummies had the babies first and then recruited the daddies, appointing only the most compatible candidate for the post? I think she could be on to something.

“When’s Father’s Day?” she asks. “How many more days?”

Though Mother’s Day is an ancient tradition, I have a feeling that Father’s Day was a twentieth century invention by Hallmark, always keen to create a new card marketing opportunity. Pleasingly, it was designated to fall precisely nine months before Mother’s Day.

“It’s in June,” is all I choose to tell her.

I look down at the little collection of treasures spread over the duvet: red handprints made at Rainbows, a card full of hearts and hugs and kisses created at school, a colouring sheet completed in the changing room at Gym Club, smuggled into her kit bag so that I wouldn’t see it before the big day. She cuddles up closer and gives me a long hug.

Hallmark really ought to start up a Daughters’ Day, too. Well, I’d be the first in the queue to buy a card.

Family, Type 1 diabetes

Birthday Thoughts & Diabetes

Posted on January 18, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

I’ve got a big birthday with a 0 on the end of it today, and happy it certainly is.

Working on the embryonic links page of this website, I realise that if I add all those that are currently floating around in my head, I will soon give the game away that I have a complete butterfly mind. So I think I had better prioritise.

At the top of this list of priorities will be the JDRF website. (Note to self: don’t forget to let them know, just in case they want to add a hotlink to mine – inbound links are so good for raising your profile on search engines.)

What’s JDRF? It’s a fabulous charity with a global network raising money to find a cure for juvenile diabetes. This lifelong illness is becoming an epidemic among children, requiring invasive, daily administration of the hormone insulin by multiple injections or a permanently connected pump infusion. Every Type 1 diabetic child must also draw blood umpteen times a day to check that they have not overdosed or underdosed and to help them hit the right balance of blood sugar so that they neither pass out (or worse) or fur up their blood vessels, causing long-time serious organ damage. This balance is particularly hard to strike in babies diagnosed (and there are plenty of diabetics whose age is represented only by a 0 at the end) and in children going through growth spurts and adolescents.

My small and otherwise perfect daughter acquired this incurable disease a few days before her fourth birthday, and so began our 24/7 battle with this unpredictable and unruly condition. Why did she get it? No-one knows. It’s not to be confused with Type 2 diabetes, generally associated (rather unfairly) with poor lifestyle choice, to which some people and certain media have taken a “serve you right” stance. Type 1 diabetes is just one of life’s many lotteries, the prize being the kind that no-one wants to win.

Asked to describe herself in a single word, my daughter would say “diabetic” – and no child should have to give that answer.

Ever since I was her age, my reply for myself would be “writer”, and I am grateful for that. I’m grateful for the talents I have been given, but I’d trade them all in tomorrow for a cure for diabetes. That will be my wish when I blow out the candles on my cake today, but that alone is not going to make it happen. In the meantime, I vow to do something that absolutely is in my power to help the cause: I will offer the JDRF my writing services free of charge and I will also tithe all commissions I get from here on it to benefit their invaluable work.

So – no presents, please – but if you want to make a donation to JDRF, please click on the link.