[prydey]

My daughter was diagnosed with T1 when she was 5. Nearly lost her. ICU for 3 days. Still makes me cry today whenever i remember it. Tough times for any parent watching their kid cling to life. It was misdiagnosed by local doc initially as just a gastro bug, which is why she ended up quite bad as we thought it was just a bug. Thankfully that parental 6th sense kicked in.

She is now 16 and on an insulin pump. As long as you have a healthy diet, it hardly impacts on life now. Our diets were always pretty good anyway. Only thing we really cut out is soft drink. Stuck with the diet stuff for a while, but now never have it in the fridge and only drink it if out for a meal etc.

In some ways, its easier to manage than T2 (not for everyone, just us) as you can manage what you eat by adjusting your insulin levels. so if you go to a birthday party, you don't have to forego the cake, you just add more insulin. Normally ahead of time to give it a chance to work.

She went through a rebellion period (which the doc warned about) a couple of years ago where she stopped dosing herself, but a reminder about the seriousness of the disease soon had her back on track.