I am posting this comment not as a criticism but as information/an observation
having discussed this with my mum yesterday who had to care for me when I had diabetes from the age of 2 1/2 (6 months after my brother was born). Mum worked full-time from when we were young, until I was in my early teens we could not get a clear indication of sugar levels i.e. the urine dipsticks just stated if there was no sugar, hypos could not be easily identified as we had no blood testing strips (they hadn't been invented), my dad worked night shifts and my mum also had my brother to look after who was 18 months younger than me. Dad worked in a factory and mum had jobs that in today's terms would probably pay the national wage. They didn't even own a phone in the early years of my life. Yet they got on with looking after me without any extra help or payment and we got on with it. We surived, we managed and and nearly 40 years later everything is still fine. It also hellped me to be a self-sufficient adult who has had a range of jobs from being a cleaner through to being an academic. Yes diabetes is there, yes it is scary (mum, dad and I have lived with the fear of what it might do to me for most of my life) and in the past as well it was extremely difficult to manage - boiling syringes before each injection with very thick needles, no blood testing, sudden hypos (day and night) but we got there and are so close for having done it.
Hi
Thats great, I understand how hard and worrying it must have been for your mum and dad back then.
I have no illusion though that the great care that can be achieved with todays fantastic inventions that my daughter won't grow into a self sufficient adult who had diabetes with bells on. I don't think that have DLA or anything else will affect her at all. Today is so very very different from 40 odd year ago, even 10 years ago infact.
You, I imagine were sent to school with your dinner money and whatever else you needed. You didn't need anyone to do your finger tests and you didn't need anyone to give you an injection as back then it was probably only one or two injections a day.
These days schools have to cover themselves so have to have care plans generally signed by the doctors or nurses or at the very least agreed by parents and schools. Someone is needed to inject a child at lunch time, you can't expect a 5 year old or sometimes even a 10 year old to inject (Gt Ormond Street Hosp do not make children under the age of 13 inject if they don't want to) themselves. In many instances the schools will not inject so mum or dad have to go in and do that every lunchtime.
You cannot expect a child to finger test themselves, some do, but some don't but definitely you cannot let a child act on the number, they may need a boost to bring them by up but how much !! One jelly baby may rise one child by 2.0 but another child it may take 5 jelly babies to do the same thing. This is all normally worked out by the parent and written in care plans. Why the hell should these children have to do all this extra stuff which is a huge responsibility when they haven't asked for diabetes, its not their fault. I understand also it wasn't your fault but back then you didn't have the stuff we have these days.
Whilst the condition is the same, the treatments and medical equipment is so so so vastly different. User intervention is huge and is practically a full time job. Schools have to react to numbers on meters and food, they didn't have to do that when you were at school.
So whilst I commend any parent ever in the world at any time since time began and I understand all the feelings it is a lot more care today than it has ever been before. I have a feeling it will get even more complicated as new devices come on the open market and I have a feeling that what we do is nothing compared to what the parents in 40 years will have to do but we are today's parents and today's parents have to intervene on pretty much a 24 hour basis with their child's diabetes.
I would like to go to work, I miss my full time job. I can't. I get called into school, we are under three different hospitals !!!
So thanks for sharing your post, I found it very interesting, I honestly did because it amazes me how parents coped when there were no meters or pumps or BB. I would not like to have been a parent then so my hat is off to your parents without a doubt.
I hope we understand each other ok, I understand where you are coming from, I wouldn't have liked to have lived with the uncertainty but I hope you appreciate that it is different now.
I think lots of people on this forum help others from running marathons to pro-active campaigning - thanks!