In answer to the many postings I have recently seen from children (and parents) asking Santa for a cure, today, with apologies to The New York Sun, I again dust off an old article I did for dLife and respond to an updated letter from a young lady who asked a simple question during this holiday season. Her name is Virginia and she asks simply, “Is there a cure for diabetes?”
Dear Diabetes Dad,
I am eight years old and I have type 1 diabetes.
Some of my little friends, and others, say there is no such thing as a cure for my diabetes, and there never will be.
Papa says you have two children with T1 and that you believe in your heart there will be a cure for them and others like me, is that true Diabetes dad?
Please tell me the truth, will there be a cure for diabetes?
Your friend,
Virginia
Dear Virginia,
Virginia, your little friends — and others — are wrong.
They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical day. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there will be a cure for diabetes. It exists as certain as the results from love, and generosity, and devotion exists, and you know that these results abound and give you the highest hope and joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no hope for a cure. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginia. There would be no childlike faith then, no wishes, no challenges of those searching for a cure, no hope to make living with diabetes tolerable. But the faith is not merely child-like that faith is being proven in science all the time…….time is closing the gap in advancements and a cure. If there was no faith, the light at the end of the tunnel, for which children and their parents constantly seek for the world, would be extinguished.
Not believe in a cure? You might as well not believe in science. You might get your papa to hire men to watch every bit of science all over the world. And even if they did not see the cure actually coming today or tomorrow, what would that prove? Just because it isn’t here today, does not mean it isn’t coming. The most real things in the world are those neither children or men (or women) can see right before them at the time they ask for it. Did they know that a polio vaccine would work? That we would walk on the moon? Did they think a heart could be transplanted? Did they think that ‘refrigerator-size’ backpack of an insulin pump yester-year would ever be where it is today? These were things that people never saw coming and now they are commonplace. Nobody can conceive all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world at a given time.
You may tear away the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world, which not the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, dedicated work of science, and collaboration can push aside that curtain and view and picture the glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, there is nothing else as real and abiding.
But it is crucial, as we all await that cure, that we move advancement in day-to-day management tools for better care today. You see Virginia, in as important a factor is a cure, is also your ability to take very good care of yourself today. In so many areas there has been more advancement in the diabetes field in the last ten years than the ninety before that time.
No cure? Thank God the hope lives and will live forever. It does for me. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten thousand years from now, people will look back at this time of hope in the heart of a child. A child named Virginia, who always believed there would be a cure. May we all have the heart of Virginia and may all who seek the cure know the importance of the work they do to help all the Virginias of this world.
Yes, Virginia, there will be a cure.
Happy holidays to all and to all, a good night.
Your friend,
Diabetes Dad
I am a diabetes dad.
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