Interesting Article on Radio 4 - Inside the Ethics Committee - Treating Teenagers

[RosieLKH]

You can get this on listen again http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0499j2f

Inside the Ethics Committee - Treating Teenagers
Series 10 Episode 1 of 4

Duration:
43 minutes
First broadcast:

Thursday 17 July 2014
The teenage years are full of change and confusion, creating tensions for parents and children. How much worse can things get when a long-term illness becomes part of the mix?

May is fourteen years old and has type-1 diabetes. After being diagnosed at the age of seven, she initially copes well but, within a few months, she struggles to take her insulin regularly.

The diabetic team try on numerous occasions to help her, and her mum, to manage May's diabetes better, but she doesn't see the point. The risks don't seem real to her and she wants to be normal, like her friends.

At the age of eleven, May is admitted to hospital three times with dangerously high blood sugars. By the age of twelve, the long term complications the team have warned May about, start to appear.

Now on the brink of adolescence, May can't cope. She feels controlled by her diabetes and when those around her try to help, it feels like pressure.

What lengths can the medical team go to to encourage May to take the treatment she needs? Can they force her to take insulin?

Joan Bakewell and her panel discuss the issues.

 

[Jaylee]

Just had a listen to this...

Yep, I'd say the understandable emotional & worry climate generated by parents as a kid when you have this condition is probably the hardest thing..
It can make you feel like an unwarranted "special case"..? Then there is the overspill into the life you create outside home.. (Liaison with schools, the responsibility bestowed on friends to keep an eye on you when your all out.)
It's something you don't understand at the time... Years later when my dad was diagnosed with T2 & dementia, my mum was his primary carer. Along with home visits by nurses...
I felt this same/similar climate (though well meaning.) was created resulting in certain behaviour issues with my dad which is associated with dementia anyway..
I found my father more compliant & retained his dignity with my more informative approach to dealing with his routine as part of his care package..
As opposed to the "bless his little heart" from my mum which took me back 38 years..