Exactly one year ago, my older son was diagnosed with Type 1
Diabetes (T1D). As with all such
diseases, this one came completely out of nowhere. It started typically, excessive thirst and
frequent urination, and ended up with a four-day stay in the hospital. He was healthy before and remains healthy to
this day, in fact we caught it early enough that he was never sick with
ketoacidosis, the potentially fatal complication from excessive sugar in the
bloodstream. We were lucky in that respect.
The reality of a life with T1D is difficult, it means a
lifetime of careful management of blood sugars, of always thinking carefully
about what you are eating and how to dose the appropriate amount of insulin, of
carefully managing the carbohydrate demands of exercising muscle tissues when
he plays soccer. But the emotional toll is far worse. A parent never, ever
wants to hear that their child has a potentially fatal autoimmune disease and,
as an adult you mind immediately wanders to the next 10, 20, 50 years of your
child’s life and you feel overwhelmed and panicked. I spent a week in tears, trying to me strong
in front of my son, but feeling crushing panic, sadness and despair inside. I would take bathroom breaks to go and
cry.
Amazingly the center of strength in the family was my son
himself. Well, I imagine it is not
amazing to anyone who has dealt with a similar issue – they know firsthand how
amazingly resilient are kids. He cried
exactly once – when he was told the diagnosis – and has never felt sorry for
himself save for a couple of moments here and there when the burden of having
to deal with diabetes when his friends do not becomes too big a drag. But from day one he took charge of his own
care, began administering his own injections, calculating his carbs and testing
his blood sugar. He has risen to the
challenge and his determination not to let it derail him has been an
inspiration to us all.
In the past year I
have never stopped marveling at how well he has dealt with such a life-changing
event. Modern medicine and technology
has helped. He now has a sophisticated
insulin pump that attaches directly to his body and allows him to be active and
avoid needles, injections and having to carry around too much equipment. He can even swim with it, which is good
because he likes to swim more than anything.
We have, as a family, adjusted to the new reality and are now used to
counting carbs, making sure he has his bag with supplies and emergency glucagon
and helping with pump changes that occur every three days.
As an economist I marvel at how difficult this diagnosis
must be for families without excellent insurance, stable jobs and local medical
expertise. We are incredibly fortunate
to have the time, the resources and the help near at hand. Something like this makes one appreciate the
need for universal access to health insurance.
This is a disease that is unpreventable.
A bad RNG as my son calls it, referring to the random number generator
code that determines the bonus prizes he gets in his favorite video game. [This has led to the discussion of how it is
not possible to program true randomness, and whether there is any such thing in
the world anyway – but I digress]
I have learned to be patient with those who don’t know the
difference between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes, as I was completely ignorant of
it prior to my son’s diagnosis as well.
For the record, they are entirely different diseases common only in the
fact that they both involve your body’s ability to deal with sugar. T1D is an auto-immune disease where, for
reasons still unknown, your body’s immune system decides to attack the cells in
your pancreas that produce insulin – eventually destroying them all. Insulin is
the hormone that allows your body to process the sugars in the bloodstream and
move them to the cells where they are converted into energy. The key with T1D is that the body processes
the insulin just fine; it just doesn’t make any itself. My understanding of T2D is that the body
commonly does not process insulin effectively so even though the pancreas is
making it, the body cannot metabolize the carbohydrates. Thus, while people with T1D can essentially
eat as they normally would, taking insulin injections to match the amount of
carbs, people with T2D often have to heavily restrict carb intake. So yes, my son can have the cake at the
birthday party, but thanks for asking.
I write this all here because after a year of minimal
blogging I felt I should explain the inactivity. My inattention to the blog has a lot to do
with time – management of my son’s diabetes at first was very time
consuming. It also has to do with
energy, when my son switched to his pump I was waking up three times in the
night to check his blood sugar for three months. But largely it has to do with
priorities. I am chair of the OSU
economics department, I am a full-time professor, I have numerous ongoing
research projects, I am writing a textbook and I am, most importantly a dad who
puts his kids ahead of anything else. So
the blog suffers and I regret it, but not that much. I keep it alive because I do hope to return
to regular blogging someday – it is something I enjoy a lot.
In the meantime, I hope you can all enjoy the podcast Jeff
Alworth and I have begun. This allows me
to take a two-hour lunch break and record a conversation primarily about beer
but also about the business and economics of brewing. Please check it out.
I thank you all for your support of this blog.
-Patrick Emerson
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