“Mum, can you please give me my needles?”

I haven’t written a blog for a while, years in fact. Plenty has been happening but nothing that had really compelled me to put pen to paper until this week. I was walking in to the kitchen when our T1D son Hamish said to me “Mum, can you please give me my needles?”.

So polite, so natural, it may as well have been “Mum, can you please pass me the sauce?”. It stopped me in my tracks and made me want to cry. My dear sweet boy – all that you go through, the highs and lows, the disrupted sleep, the multiple injections and the constant “What are you mate” (our phrase for what is your BGL?) before you do absolutely anything. And now the politest of requests for me to jab you with a needle.

It seemed very unfair in that moment that our child – that any child – should have to be worrying about these things.

Hamish can actually give himself needles, no problems, but today he just wanted it to be done by me. It seemed very unfair in that moment that our child – that any child – should have to be worrying about these things. Yes, I know, it could be worse but sometimes from where we are standing, it doesn’t seem that way. Don’t get me wrong, Hamish is a fit, healthy and very outgoing 12-year-old. Nothing holds him back #diabeteswontstopme but it just seems like a burden, physically and mentally, that is too much for any young child to carry.

Yet he remains polite, calm, unfussed.

Imagine from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep (and not even then does it stop) you are always thinking or being asked about your blood glucose levels and trying to work out how you can keep them within at least some sort of ‘normal’ range.

When he wakes up, before breakfast, before leaving for school, when he gets to school, during class, during lunch, on the way home, before he takes off with his mates, before he has a snack, before dinner, after dinner, as he is going to bed and then as he sleeps – BGLs, needles, food, needles, BGL, food, needles, repeating endlessly. Yet he remains polite, calm, unfussed. “Mum, can you please give me my needles?”.

Hopefully one day we can give you a cure as well.

We could never understand what it is like to be Hamish, we can only observe from the outside as the protectors of his life. But mate, we are so damn proud of you and how you just take it all in your stride, mature beyond your years. You can drive us crazy sometimes, but I let all that slide knowing what you face every single day.

So yes mate, I can give you your needles today and any other day you ask. Hopefully one day we can give you a cure as well.