Diabetes at Camp Bearskin Part VI: What about the siblings?

This is the sixth in a seven-part series chronicling a week of life at family diabetes camp.  

Day 5, the last full day of this Family Camp session.

It's flown by, and it's hard to believe this session of camp is almost over. I feel exhausted and also satisfied and relieved that the session has gone well. This has been one of our biggest yet, and I think we've handled the sheer numbers relatively well.

Just a few hours left before our families hug each other and the staff, say goodbye and drive out that big green gate headed back to the real world. For a few hours more there is camp. We've had to work to make this last day for our families a great one so that tomorrow when they leave, they have the memories of today sticking in their minds.

This morning, school issues was the talk for parents -- how to deal with education systems that typically think that diabetes is solely about exercise and weight loss.

This afternoon we did our once-a-session rap sessions with the kids with diabetes, and a separate one for their siblings.

For the kids with diabetes, we put them in small groups and asked questions like what does diabetes feel like to you? What are some tough things about having diabetes and some great things about it? What do you worry about? and for some of our kids we asked them to draw what diabetes looks like to them.

For the siblings we asked them questions like what does it feel like to be a brother or sister of someone with diabetes? How has diabetes affected your family? and we give them opportunities to try checking their blood sugar, taking saline injections, and tasting glucose tabs and sugar cubes. We also had them draw diabetes and what it means to them as a brother or sister.

After the diabetes rap session I was approached by a concerned staff member. She had been passed along a picture drawn by a sibling of two children with diabetes, and was concerned. The picture, drawn by the sibling, depicted dead bodies with "x"s over their eyes. As the young sibling was drawing the picture he was stating that diabetes was going to kill his brother and sister and that they were going to die.

He said he hated diabetes and what it had done to his family. He was not crying, and he didn't appear angry, just very matter-of-fact in his approach -- almost as though he had accepted this as their fate.

It is amazing what can happen during rap sessions when you hand a child with or without diabetes some colored pencils and ask them to draw their feelings.

So often the siblings get forgotten. Diabetes rocks the core and foundation of the entire family, and family units are forced to re-configure their lives according to the condition. What happens to the siblings in all of this, and how do they feel? Parents will openly acknowledge that the child with diabetes gets much more of the attention, and the siblings are left to some degree "out" or "to fend for themselves" a large percent of the time.