Trial Net tries my soul.

Jer and Gray have signed up for participation in a study called Trial Net.. and they are off this morning to Children's Hospital for their respective blood draws. Gray cried his soul out last night, begging me to change the appointment, "not to poke me with a NEEDLE!!" and of course this morning was full of the same.
Gray asked Logan to come along as moral support, so he did, however, I am home bound with the first good virus of the season.
Trial Net is a study where they are drawing blood from family members of kids with Type 1 Diabetes, to try and isolate the "markers" in the blood which combine to dictate whether you will or will not GET type 1, and also try and isolate what they can so that there can be testing done in newborns, so that if they have the markers, something can be done to prevent/postpone the onset of Type 1 diabetes.
Bleh.
It's all fairly yukky. I feel guilty for being home while I know he is having to deal with the fear and emotions of probably both kids.
Here is the website for Trial Net http://www.diabetestrialnet.org/about/mission.htm
if you want to read about it. If you have anyone in your family with Type 1, I encourage you to go and let them take a sample of your blood, they need 250,000 participants to make the study goals. I am having my blood drawn on Logan's next clinic visit, which is next week.

I hope, I hope, that they can find a way to predict in babies who will develop this condition, and I hope, I hope they can find a way to stop it.
Logan has been resisting his insulin shots recently, and it makes everything so much harder.. poor kid, he is already sick of it. Me too. Being sick certainly doesn't help my viewpoint on life, either- I am feeling crummy and the world looks fairly glum to me right now.
The good news (scary news?) is that in a few weeks or months, the trial net people will tell us how many markers Gray has in his blood, ie, what are the chances that he will develop the dreaded Dibaleeteez..
I know several parents who have opted "not to know" if their kids have the markers, and some who have found out, and are enrolled in experimental trials to delay onset for their kids. It's all frightening and gut churningly worrisome to me.
I just flat out pray that Gray does not have to deal with this. Logan told me yesterday "Mom, I really hate the Diabetes." and I said "I know, we all do, we just have to do the best we can, and be grateful we can manage it." I don't really have a better answer for him than that.

I started to read a book called "Cheating Destiny" written by a man with Type 1, but the first chapter goes on to describe how Diabetes was manged in decades past- and it was so horrifying, I had to put the book away. Starving children, boiling glass syringes, best case scenario being a few more years of life, while wasting away.. it just made me completely overwhelmed. There was a part of it that made me downright grateful for my tiny disposable needles, and the awesome power of checking his blood sugars at home, and managing his diabetes in a good way- but I can't stop thinking of all those parents who did not have these resources.
Insulin was only discovered/invented in 1920. Frederick Banting, a Canadian surgeon - (see? Canada is the BEST!!) and his co-horts isolated the cells that produce insulin and by 1922 they had a supply and started using it to treat diabetes. Before this time, no diabetic had a life expectancy of beyond a few years of diagnosis. Unimaginable to me.

Insulin, while it is precious, is not a cure.

You can probably bet Jer and I will be involved in any efforts to FIND a cure, that we are allowed to participate in. JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) is the only organization with a CURE being it's main goal, I get newsletters and updates from them monthly.
If you want to check out the site, it is amazing-
http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=100673

Some exciting news recently was. they have been able to impregnate in LETTUCE cells, some of the beta cells that produce insulin, setting up an artificial pancreas in the lining of the intestine.. and the immune system is fooled because the insulin is not coming from the pancreas!
Amazing! Heartening! And perhaps a lifetime away from being useful to Logan, but Logan is not the only kid on my mind.

My heart goes out to so many parents of kids with disease, disorder, or calamity- this is certainly the hardest test of my personality to date.