So what's next?
With night-after-night of 3 a.m. blood glucose checks, digesting the overwhelming amount of information needed to manage the condition, the constant watching of your child's diet, 24/7 monitoring for lows and highs, some parents move past their urges to succumb to self-flagellating guilt to total immersion in the day-to-day management of the condition.
However, this might not always be best. As a parent, you will need to step back and evaluate the impact of the diagnosis on not only yourself, but your diabetic child, his or her siblings, your spouse and your family unit as a whole. Life just has changed, significantly, and it is not good to continue on as if nothing is wrong.
Don't hesitate to seek support or counseling; having the emotional strength as a family to confront Type 1 Diabetes can only make the first few months easier. Here are some places to look for resources:
1. Family, friends, neighbors, and your community: This is the first, and probably most important, place to start. Do not hide what has happened to your family and child, reach out to those who are closest to you. Send an email or letter alerting people you care about of your child's diabetes; you will be surprised at the number of family and friends who are also touched by this disease.
2. Counselors or therapists: These professionals are imperative in helping to manage feelings of guilt, anger and grief associated with the new diagnoses. If you are looking for a recommendation, you can start with your family doctor or your diabetes-related health team.
3. Diabetes organizations: These groups offer a wealth of support and assistance: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF), complete with a mentoring program that matches mentoring families long dealing with disease with newbies; Children With Diabetes, which offers an outstanding yearly conference; and the American Diabetes Association, which includes an online forum specifically for parents to interact and discuss life with diabetes.
4. Diabetes-related health team: These health professionals include your Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE), endocrinologist and family doctor.
5. Leaders or members of your faith-based community.
Does the guilt ever go away? I guess that depends on who you are. I find that sometimes it rears its ugly head, and I need to force myself to understand that these are non-productive feelings and that I am not helping myself, my child or my family. Yet there are days that this is easier said than done.
These feelings, whether you child is newly diagnosed or not, seem to be interwoven into the new fabric of life as a parent with a child with "D."
