Food......

Well, first, lets remind everyone that I am NOT a diabetic.  But I don't remember anything different.  I grew up with a sister who was type one and the "regiment" of control is second nature to me.  As an adult who has not lived at home OR with my sister for over 25 years, I still have all of the old eating habits.  Ok, for example. I get up every morning and at some point need to eat breakfast.  Its just not so simple for me though.  I think "ok B, what is your fruit exchange going to be, or maybe you need to add a protein to that"  Or another favorite "i would like to put sugar in my coffee, but that's a no-no".  I have so many RULES around what i think is acceptable to eat because I have so many MEMORIES of what my sister couldn't eat in all of those early years.  Sometimes I just don't eat certain foods because i know my sister can't (or honestly, probably could now, but 25 years ago, the rules were different).  I am deathly afraid of deviating from the way i was taught to eat with my sister as a kid.  For SO many reasons...the biggest being that I feel like SHE didn't get to grow up and go "away" from it, so how can I?

I have things about food and other people that annoy me and no one understands it.  When I meet friends for breakfast and they order orange juice...like a super GIANT glass of orange juice, I can barely contain my horror!  I mean, do they KNOW how many "fruits" that is??  I want to give them a lecture that, at most, they could have a half a cup of orange juice (and seriously, I have even started to change my memory of that rule to now think maybe it was even only a FOURTH of a cup that equals a "fruit").  Some of my unlucky friends actually GET the lecture from me, and they stare with a blank look on their face at my passion for this.

That happens to me all the time.  The PASSION which I will unload on some poor unsuspecting person that would dare to not be thankful that their pancreas just casually produces the insulin they need to process whatever they put in to their body.

And so, it seems that people RARELY ever "get" me.  At first I SEEM normal.  But, i have this hidden disease that has no name.  I grew up in a Diabetic household where it seemed food both kept my sister alive, yet was the cause of so much heartache.  If we got it "wrong", there were repercussions.  There would be an insulin reaction and those scared me so much as a kid.  When they happened in the middle of the night, my brother would get in my bed and we would lay there together and listen to my parents in my sisters bedroom trying to handle it themselves, and when they couldn't, call the paramedics.

THAT memory....clinging to my baby brother in my bed in fear, waiting for my sister to be "ok" is what keeps me from being able to freely make food choices.

Are there any other siblings of type 1's out there that have felt this way????