sixfingeredman

Long before I discovered the diabetes online community or even knew what exactly a blog was, my mother introduced us to her neighbor's granddaughter.

She wore something called a pump and her parents used frightening foreign words like bolus and basal.

We were still very much shell-shocked from Charlie's diagnosis. Measuring out units of insulin into a syringe and learning to count carbs was scary enough. What they were talking about was , was , quantum mechanics. It made us very nervous. We weren't the sharpest tools to begin with. We might not be smart enough for diabetes, we thought.

We circled and stared at the smiling girl like she was an exhibit at the museum.

Resisting the urge to poke her, I noticed that she looked relatively healthy and strong. Legs and arms seemed to function efficiently. Eyes appeared symmetrical; head well-balanced. No evidence of side effects such as fur growth or oozing of any kind.

This was all very reassuring.

"Look, Charlie, look at the pretty girl. She has diabetes just like you."

"Uh, how exactly does she get the insulin?" I asked the parents, unsure whether I really wanted to know the answer.

They gave a very blunt explanation of a needle attached to a tube, which went directly into her body. More horrible mentions of bolus and basal made me feel a bit queasy.

"Oh, that's nice," I said with an expression surely similar to ones I now see when explaining Charlie's pump to people unfamiliar with the disease.

It's so scary in the beginning. My heart goes out to all of you who are there right now.