#dblogcheck

As you can tell from the tumbleweeds blowing through this blog, it's been years since I've updated with any regularity. But I found myself wanting to participate in #dblogcheck today. So I found a story I wrote almost 5 years ago, but never shared here. I'm posting it below with minor edits.
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10 June 2010

Yesterday I was hanging out in L's room while she put some of her artwork from the past school year on her walls. I was lying on her bed and she was hopping from subject to subject as only a kid recently released on summer vacation can do. I can't even remember how the topic came up. Maybe it was a complete non sequitur. She said, lightly, and with no angst whatsoever, "I think if I decide to have kids, I'm going to adopt."

I was surprised because she doesn't have any friends who are adopted, and I can't recall any books or movies she might have read or seen recently that touched on that topic. I said, "That's really cool. You know, people have different reasons for adopting." She said, "Like what?" and I said, "Well, some people's bodies aren't able to carry a baby; other people feel like there are enough kids in the world who need a family and they want to help those kids out, stuff like that." She paused and said, (still very casually, like, no biggie) "I would want to adopt so that there would be less of a chance my kid would have diabetes."  

That hadn't even been a whisper at the corner of my mind when she started the conversation. I didn't even realize she knew it could be genetic. But instead of feeling like I was hit by a truck, I just felt like I went over a slight speed bump. Instead of having the wind knocked out of me, I just felt a bit jostled. I said, "Well, you know that blogger I read, Kerri the girl (not Carey the boy)? She just had a baby, and everything went fine..." L said, "I know," continued to put sticky tack on the back of her drawings, and breezily turned to the wall to find the best positions for her masterpieces. And that was that.

If you had told me a year ago that on a sunny Sunday afternoon, while I was lying on my ten-year-old daughter's bed, she would start a casual conversation about how she was considering adopting a kid so she wouldn't pass on the genes of an incurable disease to her baby, I think I would have crumpled onto myself and sobbed. But I didn't. I just paused. Because it made my heart hurt, for a moment. But there's nothing for it but to keep on. And so we do.



 

self-portrait from 2010

that she did NOT hang on her wall

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Re-living this moment from 5 summers ago (which happened nine months after L's diagnosis, hilariously), reveals how so many things have changed since then. The support and community of the DOC was crucial for my family in those early months and years. And you guys are still important to us, just in a less diabetes-centric and more regular-old-friends kinda way.

So it's five years later and L still doesn't want kids, but for vastly different reasons. And diabetes is no longer this huge unknown that is at the forefront of our every thought and interaction, thankfully. The nurses in the hospital at diagnosis told me that L's diabetes care would some day be as mundane as teeth brushing, and I laughed in their faces. But I owe those gals an apology.

And here's a bonus of having your child diagnosed with a chronic condition, that no one ever tells you: once you and your husband and your nine-year-old have looked death in the face? You'd be amazed at how unfazed you can be when life throws other curve balls at you. Even the big ones. 

So #THANKSDIABETES.

And thank you DOC.