Diabetes Dad

Cade has been at school for 4 weeks now, and everything is going exceptionally well. But it was not always like that....

About 4 weeks before his 5th birthday we enrolled Cade, and as part of this we told the school about his Type I Diabetes - only to find out they had never had a child with Type I before, let the games begin.

My wife and I spent a lot of time putting together the action plan, figuring out all the logistics of having Cade at school - we even managed to get 5 hours a week funding for teach aid from the government. My wife had to attend the first meeting by herself, and it did not go well. The school seemed to have a lot of trouble understanding that Cade did need to be tested twice a day, he could not walk from his class to the sickbay if he was low and someone needed to do the bolusing for everything he eat. They really did not seem to understand how serious Type I diabetes could be, nor how much effort we were going to try and make their lives easier.

After returning from the meeting nearly in tears, my wife sent a strongly worded email to the school basically saying:

• We wanted to treat our son's diabetes to the very best of our ability and were personally spending the $7,000 on the pump to ensure that happened.
• We got the funding from the government for the 5 hours a week - which is pretty rare for Type I diabetics.
• We spent a lot of time and effort on trying to get an action plan together than minimized the amount that the school needed to do.
• At the end of it all, the school has to take Cade - they don't have any choice.

We arranged for me to go up and work through the details and give the first lot of basic training to the secretary, for testing and bolusing (they did not have a school nurse).
So I did go to the meeting. I made it very clear that to us Cade was not someone who needed to be treated specially (except for the D treatment) - we were not overprotective parents who wanted to control everything and in fact we wanted our son to be treated as normally as possible. It was important to us that if Cade was naughty at school he got treated like everyone else, it was important that he eat with the other kids - but his Diabetes needs to be considered. So if in doubt.... test him. If his sugars are normal, then he gets treated like everyone else.

I also discovered that the school were very concerned about the 'burden' of the action plan, and after talking to them I managed to convince them that is looks a lot worse written down that it actually is - for example I explained that since being on the pump Cade had only had 1 low and of course a large part of the plan is dealing with lows.

At the end of the meeting the school seemed a little more relaxed and we had worked through how, on a daily basis, Cade would get his tests and boluses.

Fast Forward to now.... the school has been absolutely fantastic, the lady who does most of Cades care is exceptionally caring and wants to do the very best for him, to the extent of asking what books she can read (outside of school hours) and if she can get more training from the diabetes educators. The school always logs the details we ask for, does the right boluses, tests at least twice a day - and in reality I don't think we could really ask for anything more.

I guess I am trying to say that sending a child with Diabetes to school can be extremely stressful and at times the school may seem like they don't care - and it can be difficult for us, as parents, to remember what it was like to know nothing about diabetes (18 months ago I thought that diabetics could not eat any sugar). It is stressful, but remembering that most people know nothing about diabetes and also remembering that most schools do want the best for our children can help get through this period.