I always get a kick when reading a press release about how diabetes is a burden.
We have all read it somewhere and at some time or another. You know; a burden on the health system, a burden on the national budget, a burden which drug companies are addressing.
I picture some man or woman, in a suit, writing this memorandum. “I have decided that this week we will declare diabetes……..a burden.”
A burden…….seriously?
No one knows more, outside those who live with it daily, how much of a burden diabetes is more than a parent. It is why I have stated a thousands times how much I believe parents are such heroes in this battle.
Working a job, two jobs as a family, a single parent or whatever it takes to keep everything above water is hard enough. Adding diabetes, or any chronic disease for that matter, is a game-changer.
I love the saying “Sometimes we cross a bridge that we did not know we crossed until we crossed it.” Take a look back at your last week, month, year, or many years from when you started with this ‘new normal’. We were a wreck; life would never work again, the tears, the pain, the anger. Now look back, oh sure tears and anger still remain but a new word enters our lives. Resolve.
Resolve not to give in to diabetes, resolve to move forward, resolve to make sure our children are given normal lives again as much as possible, resolve to make sure diabetes will just not win.
Amazing the things that get done….that YOU do….isn’t it? So take a second, look in the mirror and realize that no one understands the word ‘burden’ more than you. You take burden and you make it, somehow, work. Take the time to realize how much you do every day.
It’s not really a burden is it…….it is life……and we’ll deal with it just fine.
I am a diabetes dad.
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