As I began the spring cleaning of my jewelry today, I came across some earrings with missing wire, a necklace that needed some crazy glue, a couple of misplaced toe rings, and something that stopped me in my tracks. I found a teeny~tiny Medic Alert bracelet that had been tucked away long ago. It was the bracelet my son, now 16, wore when he was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes at age 3. It was so small it was hard to believe he ever wore something that little. I stared at it for a while and got a little bit choked up. I got choked up for the life he has had to lead since that awful day of his diagnosis in January 1998. I got choked up at all of the things in our lives that have been made infinitely more difficult by having to cope with a child with Diabetes. I got choked up over the prospect of 13 years and counting with NO cure. I got choked up thinking that he had to give up the innocence of his childhood at such a young age. No 3 year old should have to go through what he has endured.
Some people say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Others phrase it differenly: God doesn't give you anything you can't deal with, or when a door closes, a window opens. One more pearl of wisdom in this chain is : overcoming adversity makes you a better person. Do I agree with any of these? I am inclined to say maybe, although I want to say NO!
Would I agree my son is a stronger person for having to cope with Diabetes from such a young age? I would say that it has made him a better advocate for himself. He is much more aware of what goes on in his body than many people his age are. In fact, he has to cope with (2) chronic diseases. He has to manage both Celiac (gluten intolerance) and Diabetes every day of his life.
He is also more empathetic than most teenagers even try to be. He has told me that if he could get rid of just one disease, he would get rid of the Celiac. This puzzled me at first. The Celiac is managed by diet, albeit a difficult diet. The Diabetes can be life threatening and is all emcompassing. However, Celiac has only been a part of his life for about 2 1/2 years. The Diabetes is almost all he has ever known, so good or bad, it is the "known quantity."
I frequently think about the theory of adversity making you stronger. It always seems to be those people not dealing with this type of adversity that throw that theory at you! Maybe they don't know what else to say, or maybe they are just trying to be nice and encouraging. At the time your child is diagnosed with a dreaded disease you don't want to hear that it will make him stronger. You want to blame someone and take all the pain away from him. You want to wake up from the horrible dream and let everything go back to "normal." You don't want people telling you this will make him a better person. He was already a good person to start with!!
In 2007 I watched a documentary called Crazy, Sexy, Cancer. It was about a woman, Kris Carr, who discovered she had a rare incurable liver cancer that would someday kill her but for now it is some form of remission. There is no cure for her and very few treatments. Throughout her documentary she goes from doctor to doctor, from wholistic healer to acupunturist, and on and on until she creates for herself a way to eat, exercise, and just "be" that will keeps her in optimum health. She actually ended up falling in love with and marrying the man who was filming her documentary. She is still alive today, 8 years after her diagnosis, and credits her Cancer for all of the good friends, her marriage, and her well being! She took a scary and horrible situation and not only did she make the best of it, she benefitted from aspects of it. She would not opt to change her situation. For more on Kris, see her website: http://crazysexylife.com/
It is hard to believe that anyone who is diagnosed with Cancer would not want to get rid of it and go back to life before Cancer, but she does not want to go back to her old life. I guess adverstiy made her stronger for sure.
This weekend we watched "127 Hours" the story about Aron Ralston, the mountaineer/climber that got his arm inextricably wedged next to a large boulder in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. He was stuck for 127 hours before he made the incredible decision to cut his own arm off in order to escape and save his own life. Nobody was going to save him but him. He was weak, but his will to live kept him going and he managed to do the unthinkable and sever his arm and walk out of his desperate sitation and save his own life. In interviews with 20/20 after his ordeal, he too said that this event has made him appreciate life and his family a lot more than he did and he would not change a thing. Again, very hard to get your head around that idea. He would not choose to go back and have his arm back and not have to have gone through what he went through. I guess there must be something to this idea about getting stronger when you have to deal with adversity.
Maybe my problem is that I am perceiving this idea from a Mother's perspective. But it is not me going through the bulk of the adversity here, it is my son. I would change his situation in a heartbeat, all of the adversity theories be damned!! If I could take his portion of adversity away from him, again, I would do it in a hearbeat. But if you ask him, he will tell you that Diabetes, and now Celiac, have made him who he is. We all like who he is. In fact we love who he is. So under that abstract, I guess I could agree it has made him stronger.
But still, it makes me sad to look at that little bracelet. so tiny and innocent. I think he would have been the same fine upstanding and kind person he is without Diabetes and Celiac. He would have had a much more carefree innocent childhood, instead of one filled with low blood sugars, endless needle sticks, and being forced to eat or drink in the middle of the night in order to avoid passing out.
So to get past this inner conflict I have about my son's situation, I continue to do what I do to cope, I help to raise awareness of, and money towards a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. I will do that until I don't need to do it anymore.
When a cure is found, I will take out that little bracelet and have it bronzed. But until then it will serve as my reminder that the work of Diabetes Research is not yet done and we need to keep funding it.
In the meantime, anyone dealing with a difficult situation can decide for themself whether it has made them stronger or not. I am still not sure how to answer that other than to say it depends on who is perceiving the adversity.
