SLAP

I take for granted the daily tasks I do day in and day out.

Make breakfast
Check glucose
Fold laundry
Grocery shop
Sit down to dinner
Dose insulin

For five years, there was something about the way I coped with managing Brendon's diabetes that I couldn't put my finger on, but I finally did the other night.

Brendon was tested in the middle of the night, and he was a 45.

So I made a sandwich while Jeff brought juice up to him.

We roused Brendon from his deep sleep and we picked him up to prop him upright. He sat on the bed on his hands and knees, one fisted hand rubbing the sleep and confusion out of his eyes as we put the cup to his lips and he took sips.

I put the sandwich to his mouth and watched him eat.

SLAP. Out came diabetes with a white glove and slapped me across the face.

"DO YOU SEE WHAT I'M DOING TO YOUR SON? LOOK AT THE THINGS I DO TO HIM! CAN'T YOU SEE IT?!"

Yes I can. I can see it. Clear and crisp.

I watched Brendon take bites of the sandwich and couldn't hold back the tears. I turned my head from Jeff and tilted it downward so that Brendon couldn't see the tears either.

What I couldn't put my finger on all those years and finally did that night was that I go through day to day management tasks with little emotion behind it....my senses were dulled.

But, that night, Brendon and his condition were brought into crystal clarity and I felt it.

Diabetes has lightly slapped me on other occasions during the most mudane of times, like when I'm weighing food, or giving Brendon a cotton ball to soak up the blood from his finger. And although I'd rouse from my own slumber and see the depth of Brendon and his condition, it would only last a second, and I could never articulate the effect or reasoning behind those slaps.....until now.

My senses are razor sharp.