Myth: Diabetes can cause bad behavior in children.
Fact: Some people may assume that because of hyperactivity associated with high blood sugar or irritability associated with low blood sugar, children with diabetes are going to be a nightmare. The temptation is to let a physical symptom take over and affect one’s overall behavior. Children with diabetes are just like any other child, and need to be shown that they should remain respectful of others and polite while treating their symptoms appropriately. Diabetes doesn’t take away good manners.
Myth: There’s a good chance my child will go blind or become an amputee because of his diabetes.
Fact: This used to be true, back in the days before high-tech blood tests for glucose levels, better insulins and A1C tests. Imagine only being able to have one shot of insulin a day, and basing the dose on glucose levels in urine that could be as much as four hours old. The risk of complications was much higher then. These days, studies have shown the risk of long-term complications is drastically lower with tighter control of blood sugar numbers—which is made possible by the latest advancements in technology and insulin. In fact, complications such as these are less common among type 1 diabetics than among older people with type 2 who don’t know they have the disease for years. While their blood sugar level remains elevated for so long, they unwittingly begin to lose their sight or the circulation in their feet.
Myth: The reason some children get Type I diabetes is that their diet was too high in sugar to start with.
Fact: People on the street have actually said this one to me: “Oh, your child has diabetes. Did she eat too much candy?” No, she didn’t. She experienced an autoimmune attack on her pancreas which killed off all the insulin-producing cells in her body. The reason type 1 diabetes strikes has to do with one’s genetic makeup—although in our family it struck out of the blue, as far as we know—and some sort of “triggering event” which pushes the immune system into overdrive. In our case, it was a severe staph infection. But the disease can also be the result of anything from pesticides to immunizations.
