What I learned from my meeting this week........

January 12, 2012

I am sitting in the airport in St. Louis after a three day meeting waiting to get on a plane to take me home. It was a good meeting from the business perspective – all my work and everything I was in charge of went well – but it was, on a personal side, very difficult.  This isn’t the first time I have been away from Allison since diagnosis but it is the first time I have been half way across the country – but that still wasn’t my issue. The issue was that this is the first time that I have seen a lot of these specific people since Allison’s diagnosis – they all knew something happened to her and that I cut back to a part time consultant for the company – but they weren’t sure of why.

So question after question from people explaining what disease my daughter was diagnosed with and the constant lack of understanding of what type 1 diabetes continued. Maybe I have gotten to comfortable in my own circle of friends and family that understand – that have taken the time to dive in and learn and listen to me and others so that they understand my feelings and emotions. It was overwhelming and hard to not be bitter towards a few of the questions, comments and suggestions from people at the meeting, but I held my tongue and let them give me advice and tell me they were sure my daughter would get better.

I did have the most outrageous conversation about diabetes though and almost went over the edge -I was talking to someone about Allison and we were interrupted by someone else that was listening and she proceeded to compare her dog to my daughter.  Apparently it was very difficult for her to deal with a dog with diabetes but she loved him enough that she decided they would work with him on it. She went into detail about having to give him shots and when he collapsed had to squirt gel into his mouth. It was grueling and hard but she perked up and was pleased to tell me that he lived to be about 12 years old, which is old for a dog. It did get too hard for them when the dog started having kidney problems and they did have to put him down. Immediately after saying that she looked at me and said “I don’t think you should have to do that with your daughter though – she is person so it must be easier to deal with than with our precious dog.” At that moment I actually wondered if she thought that putting our daughter down was an option if it got too hard on us. I still can’t wrap my head around this moment and that someone could or would equate their dog to my 7 year old daughter. It was truly a surreal moment in my life.

There were the slew of other questions that came from everyone that has little to no understanding – but I have heard these before: she must be doing better now, at what age does she grow out of it, a friend of mine has the really bad kind of diabetes at least she doesn’t have that, well she looks healthy in her pictures so why did you cut back at work, and who is taking care of her while you are gone (because apparently my husband is not an adequate care giver.)

Near the end of the meeting though an interesting discussion occurred on how the general public does not understand the industry of the attendees of this meeting  – there are a ton of misconceptions about the profession they lead and they spent a good portion of the meeting discussing how to handle the general ignorant public. The entire time I could only think about the ignorance of the general public about type 1 diabetes – and that included 90 percent of the people in that room. The speaker was wise and helped them through understanding how to use your words to educate and not intimidate. I learned a lot too that I will take with me in explaining type 1 diabetes.

Since everyone at the meeting were people I work with on a professional level I never said anything out of turn or tried too hard to explain too much how they were incorrect – I did at times correct them though.

I got to take two nuggets of wisdom away with me from this trip:

Apparently diabetes in dogs is worse than a daughter with it – but my daughter is not a dog (I actually learned from this that some people aren’t just ignorant they are stupid) and I learned how to speak to people in a different way that have great misconceptions about your situation – I wish I had learned this before the dog conversation!! J

Until there is a cure,

Jennifer