Ive written a piece about being a Mum. And about Mums being generally incredible. Particularly you Type 1 Mums. And especially you Tracy Vinnicombe and you Elle Dormer. Please pass on and share thank you. A Type 1 Mum The day my son was born was not the greatest day of my life. Not even close. And if I was to break down that day and consider the bulk of what occurred, it was much closer to being one of the worst days of my life. Tracy was in hospital for over three days before George arrived. Fifty two hours of labour. And there was a moment when I didn’t care about being a Dad anymore. I just wanted it all to stop. You see, there was this woman I adored, lying on a bed in agony. Excruciating agony. And it kept coming and coming and getting worse and worse. I was worried about her. Had flashes of losing her. And the idea of that reduced me to dust. I hadn’t met my boy yet. He was easy to forget about. I know how terrible that seems written down. But that’s the truth. Now we move on three and a half years and my son is all I think about. Three and a half years and I have been away from him for three nights in total. Never longer than twenty four hours away. I can’t you see. I can feel my seams come apart when I haven’t seen him. ‘Love’ doesn’t even come close. I adore my family, my brothers, my sister, my parents. My wife has made me a better person. She does every day. And she is part of me now. I don’t have the words for George. My hero? Yes. My heart? He has all of it. My inspiration? Yes. George picked up my world, shook it, reshaped it and showered it in light. My ambition has gone. Always sounds such a terrible thing to confess. As if having a child is enough of an achievement just sit on my bum and watch him for the rest of my years. That’s not it. Not at all. It’s just that the concept of ‘I’ ‘me’ ‘myself’ is laughably silly now. He’s smashed it into my pea brain that life has nothing to do with me. It’s all about the impact that I will have upon others. It’s fairly terrifying, just to think about how many things my three year old son has taught me. Women are the best. Unequivocal fact. If you didn’t realise that after watching a Mother give birth, then there’s no hope for you. Hopefully you get there long before that moment, and if kids aren’t your thing, it’s best to catch up to the fact as quickly as you can. It makes life much simpler. The hunter has been dead for a very long time. They’ve just done a really good job of bluffing by on ego and BS. Hunters used to draw on caves to document the heroism of their kill. Epic stories of glory and bravery painted on murals. But all they were doing was fetching the tea. And now hunters are obsolete. It’s the gatherers who will save society. They are the ones who will rescue the environment. If you walk into any developing world country you will find that the corruption and violence is the entity of the men. It’s the women who are running hospitals and opening schools. Walk into any office in the western world and you will find a man surviving on anger and ego. A lethal cocktail mix, which curiously many in the corporate world still like the taste of. Tracy is a Mum. She’s been a parent for longer than I have. When she was pregnant I would go off to work for the day and there were times when it will almost escape my mind that I was about to become a father. But Tracy was already eating the right things, resting, preparing. She was caring for our child long before I was. Yes, I was considerate. I even read the odd book. And I’d like to think that I looked after her and helped when she needed it. I am every inch the ‘modern’ man, whatever that is. But a man all the same. And a father. Not a mother. There’s a very big difference. Does she love him more than me? No. Not possible. Does she love him better than me? No. Not possible. But it is very definitely different. She was a parent all of nine months in fact. Nurturing, caring, protecting. There were times during those nine months when it could almost escape my mind that parenthood was ‘impending’. But never for Tracy, she could feel him, hear him, every second of every day. There have been many moments that come back to haunt me from George’s diagnosis. There have been many moments since that have caused me colossal psychological damage. Nightmares are frequent. Many times when I am off running for miles, nightmares become daymares and I can find myself drowning in tears of release on the pavement or in the park. Many people refer to diagnosis as some kind of grief. As though something has been lost. That’s wonderfully articulate, and true to a degree, but I still feel the pain, his pain, and sometimes that overwhelms me completely. It’s very present and not ‘past tense’ in any way. The idea that someone so beautiful, untainted, innocent, someone so kind and generous, should suffer any pain, always struck me as the most savage injustice. I never knew that love could consume me in such a way. I can’t really bear to be away from him. When work means I don’t see him before he goes to sleep, the first thing I do is go into his room (check his numbers) but I just stand there and look at him. He’ll wake, often, he’s usually waiting, and I lie next to him. He tells me about his day. We talk, giggle, read a story. And my world fills up. I think about him all of the time, he informs my every decision. My while life is in him. And every tiny piece of pain he feels I want to devour, let it explode inside me and never touch him. I know that I cannot stop that pain. And it shatters me. I also know, whatever I am feeling, Tracy is feeling too. We, as parents, have been through so much more than I’d ever wish upon anyone else raising children. The wires into his body, the drills, the blood and screaming, the pain and agony of the one you love ripping right through every nerve of your body. But the thing that always comes back to haunt me is seeing my wife, seeing her watching him fight for his life in that ambulance. And seeing her face as they took us away from his bed with the words ‘you won’t want to be around for this bit’. Seeing her asleep in a hospital chair, twitching with nightmares, battered by exhaustion. Seeing her watching silently begging for him to come back to us. It all looked like machine gun fire raining down on my wife. Those are the images that come back to me all the time. It began soon after diagnosis. The NCT meet ups were all a reminder of how healthy everyone else’s child seemed to be. The agony of watching their care free existence would bring Tracy home in tears. The condition is so all consuming that it’s far too hard to relay to, even the most understanding of friends, in just a few conversations. And so you don’t. Or she doesn’t. Instead she puts on this incredibly brave face, and fights, to the point of collapse to make sure that her boy is (to all outside eyes) living exactly the same life as everyone else. And other people could be so incredibly cruel. They’d all flick read the newspaper about ‘Diabetes, the scourge of the NHS’ and they had made their minds up. Many had assumed Tracy had somehow done the wrong things during pregnancy or some would even ask if George had ‘got too fat’. The casual laziness in the remark ‘he’ll grow out of it though, won’t he’ still gets to me. Only they never said any of these things to me. I’m a man. They don’t dare. People can be terrible like that. I don’t mind admitting that I have collapsed around twenty times since George was diagnosed (not such a big man now!). Exhaustion has got the better of me, lack of sleep, adrenaline filled panicked hospital trips have all taken their toll. And I have blacked out, literally keeled over. I am a fit, strong thirty seven year old man, and just caring for my son has knocked me out that many times. Everything I have felt Tracy has felt, everything I’ve been through Tracy has been through. I’m supposed to protect my son. I am supposed to protect my wife. I haven’t managed to do either of those things. Tracy and I share duties for George’s care. We both work. And we both attack the nights as equally as we can. We’re up about five times a night on average. George is very insulin sensitive. We give him jelly babies to treat hypos in the night. I have given him half a jelly baby (1.5carbs) and that has been enough to take him from a hypo (3.6) to as much as (12.1). Balancing his levels is a real fight. And one which you never feel like you win. When George’s blood sugar levels are out of control (growth spurts, heat, cold, failed sets) the feeling of failing him is crushing. Tracy is his Mum, his chief protector, his number one carer. She goes to war for him every day. As all Type 1 Mums do for their kids. And she does it in silence. The only people who really ‘know’ just how demanding this condition is, are the other Mums with Type 1 kids. The stuff that really gets to Trace is when we are forced to look into the future. George started nursery this September. Tracy was rigid with anxiety as the starting date approached. The care plans, the training days, the meetings with the school. Every time we drove past the gates and looked in, she would be gripped with fear by the idea of someone else having to care for her son. We are fortunate. His nursery have been utterly wonderful. They’ve met the challenge head on. I saw their fear first hand, but to their immense credit they have kept on. And they care for him wonderfully. I love them all incredibly for that. But next year will be ‘grown up’ school. Next year will be more than just a snack of fruit to consider. Next year will be all day. The battle has begun to find him the right level of care for that new beginning already. Our dear friend, and fellow Type 1 Mum Elle Dormer, has been fighting for over a year to have her son’s care guaranteed at school. At first she was helpfully told that she ‘might want to find another school for her son’. Despite the fact that his brother was already in attendance. It’s completely earth shattering to be told that someone might not ‘want’ your child. Let alone be told that they have no interest in caring for them. The school have changed their attitude (largely due to Elle and her husband, James, fierce determination and persistence) but now they are faced with a battle against the council to ensure their boy is looked after. Elle is an incredible Mum. An awesome woman in every aspect. Bright, articulate, compassionate, very intelligent and determined, yet even she is pushed to the very limits by the fight that comes with having a Type 1 child. I have enjoyed spending time with Elle. I spoke to her in an interview for the website. I found an odd reassurance in seeing someone else constantly hover over their phone, knowing that nursery could call at any moment. She told me that she is incapable of going twenty minutes without thinking of what her sons blood sugar level is. She hears the alarm for his sensor, even when he is in another building. She doesn’t sleep. She worries about the future all the time. She worries that her child will never get the freedom of existence that is every child’s right. She is just like my wife. There are so many worries I’ve discussed with my wife about the future. George’s future. I remember proffering that ‘things might get easier as he grows’ when my wife told me of Miles (a friends daughter) whose teenage hormones sent his numbers terrifyingly high and hospitalised him. The only way to get control was to put him on a permanent drip. I’ve met Miles. A charming, wonderfully well adjusted, smart young boy. He’s wonderful with my son. To think of him going through that had me in floods of tears. And then I started to think of George, and all that awaits him. Little kids have been gorgeous with him so far. They know no social etiquette. They ask him what he is wearing round his waist. ‘My pumper’ he replies, with a smile. They watch as he is injected. And ask about the blood. And then they go and pretend to inject their teddy bears. Beautiful. But I do worry about the older kids and the teenagers and the...etc etc These are conversations I have with my wife often. She is always thinking of the long term and the short term with George. He is part of her. Always will be. Her love is the most natural, most powerful love that exists in this world. A Mothers love. My respect for Type 1 Mums is impossible to articulate. I’m not sure a blog is ever going to achieve it. But I do want to bow down in respect. To celebrate them a little too. If the site does anything, I hope it puts across just a semblance of what it is like to care for a Type 1 child. We’ve had wonderful feedback so far. People are spreading the word. It’s given my wife a little bit of validation for her fight which has remained silent for so long. My biggest hope is that it is spread so far and wide that it becomes utterly un-ignorable. And that the voice and will to find a cure becomes enormous. I need help though. I need people to risk annoying friends and acquaintances and strangers alike, by passing it on. Asking them to read. And to watch. And to support. Ignorance is crippling. Knowledge can conquer just about anything. Please spread the word as far and wide as you can. In truth, I know I will be able to run two marathons. It will hurt. A lot. But I will get through it. The third marathon is going way beyond my limits. It will break me. But the idea of giving up is laughable. George didn’t. His Mum never will. No Type 1 Mum would. Respect and love to you all. On November 13th, the eve of World Diabetes Day, Simon Vinnicombe will be running 78.6 miles, or three back to back marathons, one for every year since his son’s diagnosis with Type 1. The website, with interviews and a video diary of George is at runfortype1.org
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 14:03:31 +0000
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