I don’t want my son to have a pump.

It’s not that I don’t want him to have a pump and the freedom it brings. I don’t want him to have to need a pump. It makes me sad that one of the things he wants in life is a pump. When cleaning out his book bag this week I found a sheet with goals for 2013. He wrote “get a pump”. His body needs an artificial part to do the job his pancreas is failing to do.

Why?! Why him?! Why any child?

At the end of the school year I was walking past the conference room at one of my schools. I saw a teacher in there and for the first time noticed that she was wearing a pump. I stopped to ask her about it. She told me that T1 diabetes was her 40^th birthday gift. I told her my 10 year old had T1. She went on to tell me how tough it is and how her stomach looks so bruised from the infusion sites. I wanted to tell her to shut up. Didn’t she realize she had 40 years of life free from all of the cumbersomeness of diabetes? My son got 10 years. He got 10 years of a normal life. I know that in that moment she was only thinking of herself and not that fact that she was talking to the mother of a child that would gladly switch places with her son if she only knew how. Give me diabetes! Not him!! I still have moments that I want to scream and shout. I don’t want this for him.

But then I remember that there are families that had children diagnosed at less than a year, or at 2 years or 4 years. I know it’s not cancer. We aren’t going through chemo, radiation, or blood transfusions. This is a manageable condition. But, still.