Cancer Articles (Dr. S.N White)

What can I do for my diabetic child? There are many things you can do. You can help the child accept the disease and teach him or her how to take care of it. You can encourage diabetic children to achieve whatever they want to achieve in life despite diabetes. But there's one extremely important thing parents sometimes fail to do because they don't know it needs to be done that's to help them get rid of some of the terrible fears that diabetic children carry around inside and suffer over and don't talk about. Dr. Robert Rood, a San Fernando Valley diabetologist who works with children and adolescents, told a story about a child at a summer camp where he was serving as physician. This girl was a model camper, full of fun and very popular. Dr. Rood, in checking out her urine tests, discovered that her one shot of insulin a day wasn't doing the job, so he decided to divide her insulin into two doses morning and evening. This worked fine. Her blood sugar returne...

A diabetic child can disrupt it or can merely change it, in some ways for the better. Disruptions occur when the parents are filled with guilt, anger, or both. We heard of a husband who blamed his wife for the child's diabetes and threatened to divorce her "if anything happens to that kid." Obviously, he hadn't heard of the new theory of the cause of juvenile diabetes, that a virus is responsible, just as for the measles or mumps. Parents fraught with guilt can coddle and overindulge the diabetic child. This not only creates resentment and feelings of being unloved in any other children in the family but can be ruinous for the diabetic child as well. Diabetes can become for the child an excuse for dependence and manipulation of other family members instead of a stepping stone to strength. This also holds true if one parent becomes diabetic. In American families these days we tend to be more than somewhat child centered. If a parent becomes diabetic and needs atte...