Wednesday, May 18, 2016

The Benefits of Denial


They all seemed so sure of what was wrong. They nodded and whispered and knew, but I didn’t. Or I just couldn’t.

Finn sat on the hospital bed putting his Legos together, saline dripping into his vein. He was wearing only a hospital gown and his Batman underwear. He had just turned five. I sat next to him, my feet up on his bed, staring numbly at my son, my phone resting idly in my hand. One test, a tiny drop of blood from Finn’s finger, and they all seemed so sure of what was wrong with him.

“What is wrong with my son? Will someone please tell me?” I screamed on the inside. But on the outside, I quietly waited for confirmation. Didn’t they need to run more tests? Talk to some expert? Bring another doctor in to confirm the diagnosis?

Truth was, I couldn’t face the truth. I was in big, fat denial. Honestly, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Type 1 Diabetes? What did that even mean? I knew what it was, sort of. I knew diabetes was a disease that shut down your pancreas and demanded insulin through a syringe with every meal. What I didn’t know was how radically diabetes would change our lives.

We sat in that fishbowl in the Emergency Room for hours, nurses and doctors swishing open and close the glass door to check on Finn. In addition to checking his blood sugar, they were constantly checking for acid which had built up in dangerous amounts in his blood and was spilling out into his urine.

All this is hard to write about. On June 18 it will be 3 years since that day in the emergency room. It has taken me three years to be willing to go back to that place, emotionally. It’s not that I have been in denial about my child having diabetes. I live it and breathe it every day; I can’t deny it. But it’s difficult to allow myself to feel diabetes, instead of just treat it.

Diabetes is HARD, and you don’t get day or night off. Blood sugar checks, carb counting, adjusting for highs and lows, changes in insulin amounts, sleepless nights. There is so much to DO for diabetes that I didn’t have space to FEEL. Raising kids in general is challenging, especially four of them, but throwing diabetes into to the mix… well, sometimes it just feels like too much. It’s easier just to shut the emotions off.

Denial is powerful. It protects us from devastating news. It allows us to do the work that just needs to get done. Emotion, really dealing with the truth, can shut us down and not allow us to do what is necessary. Denial is good and important, but we can’t stay there. We can’t keep our emotions captive forever. We can’t control or push down or deny forever the trauma that comes with this life or it will consume us, control us, embitter us. We must deal with our emotions, rumble with them, so we can accept reality and make peace with them.

Denial in the emergency room protected me and allowed me to be strong for Finn as he calmly put his Legos together. But three years later, I need to finally rumble with all my emotions and fumble my way into acceptance of our lives with diabetes. I hate diabetes, but I love my son, and I will do whatever I need to do to care for him. Denial may have benefits, but acceptance is truly the way to live. 

How has denial affected your life? When did you finally accept your circumstances?