World Diabetes Day...it's a family affair • D-Mom Blog

My son wanted a blue circle and a rainbow on his hand today.

Today is World Diabetes Day.

It’s the birthday of Banting, who with Best, discovered insulin in 1921.

I wish I had some fantastic post to share with you. Inspiring words, enlightening thoughts.

You can check in on Facebook every day this month where some of my daily thoughts have gone viral.

Last night as I snuggled in with my six-year-old — the sibling of a child with type 1 diabetes — one of the last topics of conversation was WDD.

Me: Tomorrow is World Diabetes Day.
6yo: Oh! You mean “hope?”
Me: Well, yeah.
6yo: I’d better wear my Hope shirt.
Me: It’s also a day for diabetes awareness. We can teach people about diabetes.
6yo: And if they don’t learn about diabetes tomorrow they can learn about it the next year? So every November 14th people can learn about diabetes? I never knew that.

Q was diagnosed with diabetes just before he turned one. He’s never known family life without diabetes.

He surprises me from time to time with reflections on his sister’s diabetes and thoughtful questions.

Sometimes he asks for juice boxes or reminds me that “Smarties aren’t just for low blood sugars.”

As we laid in bed together I glanced at her DexCom receiver, which gets handed off to me each night. He took it and began counting the red dots on the screen and commented that Q had been low.

“Sixteen red dots. Twelve white dots and four more white dots. Sixteen and 16, that’s 32 dots, right?”

I know today is supposed to be all about my daughter and highlighting her medical condition, but I think as we celebrate World Diabetes Day, I’ll not only celebrate my daughter’s strength and resilience, but also her brother’s caring and advocacy.

When he woke up this morning, he put on his “Hope” to cure diabetes shirt, adorned it with a WDD blue circle pin, and asked me to paint a rainbow on his hand.

(This was originally published November 14, 2013.)