The Sweetest Diabetic Sister

Today is my sister's five-year anniversary of being diagnosed with diabetes.

A few days before Christmas 2003 on a trip home from Boise, the brothers were teasing her mercilessly about having to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. But an astute Dad took note, looked up the symptoms when they got home, realized they matched diabetes, and took her in to the hospital. She was diagnosed with Type I diabetes and spent the next three days in the hospital, with a new tally of how many times she'd been 'pricked' each time we came to visit her. She stopped counting somewhere around 100.

In the car home after she was discharged on Christmas Eve Day, she, then 9, asked us nervously, "You didn't decorate the tree without me, did you?" To which we, her three incorrigible older siblings replied, "Oh, sorry, we thought kids with diabetes didn't like to decorate Christmas trees." True story.

We had, in fact, waited for her to come home to put up the ornaments. But those jests were a sliver of what was to come in terms of the ordeal she's had to put up with since then. She has to account for every carbohydrate in every meal and snack and morsel of a bite every day. And she does this, not out of some ill-advised fad diet, but because her body can't regulate what ours do involuntarily. She has to keep her feet warm and dry, has a higher risk for heart & kidney disease, and, oh, also has to watch out for blindness, among other things.

I had a heart condition when I was her age, for which I had to give up lots of things, notably swimming lessons, because laps (specifically starting to run out of breath while underwater) would make my heart rate jump from 80 to 180 bpm. (I blame this for the reason I still swim like a frog.) At one point, I was taking medication four times a day. One time in middle school while sledding with friends, after flying off the saucer and faceplanting in the snow (underwater with no breath = in snow with no breath, apparently), my heart went off and I had to excuse myself while I went and discreetly stuck my head in the snow repeatedly to try and get my heart rate back down. Because moving, paralyzing shyness, acne and MIDDLE SCHOOL weren't traumatic enough on their own, but thankfully I had a medical condition that occasionally turned me into a brumal ostrich.

But those were extremes, and at 13, they fixed me enough to go off medication, and cured me fully at 17. Em, on the other hand, will have this for her whole life, barring some monumental medical breakthrough.

I often say that Em is one of the most well-adjusted people I know, besides being 14, moving from the only town she's ever lived in this summer and having this medical ball and chain. She handles this disease well. And I don't mean this in the way people will insultingly say "You'd never know Sheila has cancer," where they're really just glad Sheila isn't burdening them with the gravity of her illness. Em is not shy about having diabetes and is openly frustrated when she either over or underestimated the carbs in a certain food and now her insulin levels are either too low or high. She also will readily introduce you to her insulin pump, Gloria. (Her first pump, Todd – named after the dog I will have one day – passed away last year.) The kid might not have insulin, but she's got more heart and strength of character and beautiful flaxen hair than the lot of us, and she deserves some recognition.

Here is her Sweetest Diabetic Sister in the World playlist:
"I Want Candy," The Strangeloves
"Sugar and Spice," The Cryan Shames
"Falling Sugar," The Palace Guard
"Sweet Young Thing," The Chocolate Watchband
"Ready Steady," The Sugarettes
"Sweet Lady," What Made Milwaukee Famous
"Dulce Compañía," Julieta Venegas
"You Want the Candy," The Raveonettes
"Sugarcube," Yo La Tengo
"Angry Candy" and "Sugarless," Autolux
"Sugar Man," Rodriguez
"You're So Sweet," Neil Diamond
"Sweet Darlin'" She & Him
"Sipping on the Sweet Nectar," Jens Lekman
"Sweet Thing," Van Morrison
"Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" The Velvet Underground