Today, November 14th, is World Diabetes Day, and November has been proclaimed National Diabetes Month by President Obama.  As a result, I thought it was fitting to do a post showcasing this amazing Alaia eyelet-embellished tote I recently got off of Net-A-Porter (http://www.net-a-porter.com) with the glucose testing supplies for my son that I have to make sure are in my handbag at all times.  I fished out testing strips, spare lancets, a lancing device and a glucose meter.  There’s also a bunch of candy in my handbag for sugar lows (gummy bears are a favorite, although Skittles offer a lot of sugar bang for your buck), but I thought that kind of ruined the picture.

My son was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when he was a little over 2 1/2 years old.  I’ll be honest … it was NOT easy.  I had an irrational fear of needles, so it took a lot of mental preparation for me just to be able to inject my son.  I practiced on my mom, and the first time I stuck her, I probably had that needle poised and ready to go for 20 minutes, just trying to get past the mental block of piercing her skin.  She at least knew what was going on; Blake didn’t understand why he had to be injected up to six or seven times a day and pricked slightly more often than that.  Thankfully, now that he’s 5, he’s on the pump, which we have to change only every two or three days.  The insulin tube gets inserted like a thumb tack, which I think would hurt a lot (more so than the needles), but Blake’s become a real champ at it.

There are days when it seems to get a little easier, but we always have to be vigilant.  We still wake up twice during the night to test him so he doesn’t accidentally have a low (since we don’t yet have the confidence that he will always wake himself up).  And nothing can go into his mouth that I don’t account for (one time I found an unopened canister of Pringles hidden under his chest of drawers, and it was so clear that he just wanted to know they would be there for when he asked to have them, and not that he would sneak to eat them like a typical kid, that it almost broke my heart).

I think we’d all love to find a cure, but until then, we continue to make strides that make me confident that Blake can have a long, healthy, amazing life with Type I diabetes.  And I know that’s due in large part to the awareness raised by World Diabetes Day and National Diabetes Month and the research and outreach efforts from organizations like the International Diabetes Foundation and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (focused exclusively on Type I diabetes).  Plus, Blake’s an amazing kid, just like all the Type I kids I’ve met … so adaptable and full of life and never once feeling sorry for themselves.

And my next post, I promise, will be lighthearted …