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?
