I just feel at the moment like it is all too much really.
I'm so worried that my children are going to be t1 as well, that I've selfishly inflicted this life sentence on them. I feel a lot of the time like I'd be better off dead than having t1 diabetes, it has sucked all the joy and fun from everything. It is no longer a death sentence - or at least it's a slower death sentence - but it is still a life sentence isn't it?
Thanks everyone for your support. I keep hoping and hoping that technology will improve even more - to the point of a bionic pancreas - because I don't see any cure on the horizon to be honest.
Just to put a little perspective on it, I HAD Type 1 from 1959 to 2013 and I'm only 59 now. Throughout my life until 2012 the torture of "We think a cure could be available within 5 years" regularly reared it's demonic head with depressing outcomes. When I started at King's College, University of London in 1978, I already had kidney and retinal damage and life was bleak. I was told at the age of 13 that I might make it to 20 and at the age of 20 an actuary informed my father that I would be lucky to reach forty.
An ophthalmologist at King's College Hospital at this time told me that if I carried on abusing the system, I would be blind by the time I reached 23. He brought me to my senses. To this day, since 1966, I have been on 245 gm of carbohydrate a day, but when I was on insulin, I would give myself an extra dose of fast acting in order to keep up the food intake. I cannot imagine living on so little each day - where the hell does energy come from? The ophthalmologist not only brought me to my senses but, more importantly, made me realise that maintaining a balance was not simply maintaining a steady HbA1c, but more to do with how you counteract frequent peaks and troughs, which can be brought on by:illness (viruses etc) stress, adrenaline, depression, over-exertion, lack of food, too much insulin and so on. The long and short of it is that my change of attitude meant that I survive the Old B*****d (as a medic friend of mine so elegantly describes diabetes), have a wonderful daughter ( who is Celiac - another auto-immune condition undoubtedly from my genes) who has in turn a gorgeous 6 year-old daughter who calls me Silly Papa! My kidney function was so poor that Addenbrooke's Hospital transplanted a kidney AND a pancreas in August 2013 - it's still a miracle. I can understand your feelings only too well, but you have given life to your children, who would rather have a surmountable problem than no mother I'm sure. My mother always advised me to weigh up the worst case scenario. Could you live with it. If you thoroughly enjoyed any meal and it rendered you unconscious unexpectedly, the system is still in place to look after such eventualities. I feel that if you take the plunge, the glow will wear off on to your family. The best of luck.