Day 12 of #HAWMC:

Back to School, The Lessons I've Learned

 

Today let's delve into one of the lessons that my job as Alison's pancreas has taught me. 

 

To bring my point home, I want to tell you about an incident that happened a few weeks after Alison's diagnosis in 2010.  I tried taking Alison out for lunch after one of her endo appointments as the nutritionist informed me that I would have to learn to gain a comfort level outside the house.

 

While in preparation for our brown-bagged lunch at the food court of the mall, just after I pricked my 2 and a half year olds finger, she began to wail.  A man leaned over and said to Alison "I'd cry too if my mommy hurt me like that".

 

I would love to tell you that this is where my witty response came in.  It didn't.  My response was silence.  I was so stunned, so full of emotion that I could not possibly find words - not even crass ones.

 

Fast forward to recently.  I was speaking to someone in a position of authority about Alison's condition and I used what, to some of you may be a very loaded and dirty word.  I told him that funding to the program I was discussing would hurt families like mine, families who had a member with a disability.

 

Someone later took me aside and told me that the word made her very uncomfortable.  She has family members with diabetes and that she does not consider them to be any less "able" than anyone else.

 

I took this opportunity to assure her that Disabled is not a word that I use lightly.  It is a technical term that is used by Ontario Human Rights Commission to define what constitutes a very broad scope of physical disorders, mental disorders, physical injuries.  It allows for monetary compensation and protects the rights of those aforementioned.  I by no means consider my child or, anyone else's, to be sub par or infirm.

 

These days I try not to get too hung up on what other people have to say.  I am doing, saying and writing what I fell I can to make a better, healthier world for my daughter and all other kids with T1D, I am sure that means that sometimes things will get lost in translation, but isn't it better to take action and apologize later than do nothing at all?