The one where the lounge gets destroyed…..

Lord help me,

It is 7.36 on a Saturday night and I am hiding in my kitchen, laptop on the table and Netflix steadily refusing to load on the iPad.  From the lounge I can hear noises that sound similar to wild animals being slaughter by a half crazed laughing maniac.

I am terrified….

Of four relatively small little girls.

It is sleepover time at my house and those girlies are relishing every minute.

My lounge has been rearranged.  Earlier today it was a grown up zone.  Sofa with scatter cushions impeccably placed, coffee table with a couple of magazines carefully arranged and a pretty bunch of flowers resting on the top.  I pride myself on keep my lounge and the furniture within it tip top!

 

Image courtsey of Kotkoa/Shutterstock

Scented candles gently glowering emitting a soft vanilla smell.  The cats lazed on their radiator snugglies, the radio gently whispered tunes from Radio Two.

My lounge was my haven.

And now….

It is a bedlam of chaos.  Several board games are upturned on the floor.  Monopoly hotels lay devastated on the rug; walking along the floor comes with a warning because when a green house becomes embedded in your foot the agony is eternal.

I had the sense to remove the coffee table and pop it in the sanctuary of my bedroom early.  The scatter cushions have not fared so well, they have been tossed off the sofa in an earlier battle and are currently decorated with Hula Hoops and Dairy Milk chunks.  It is going to take me weeks to clean them back to standard….

How can children be so destructive?

And the reason my lounge has become a ten-year old playground?

It is three years since Molly was diagnosed diabetic.  Three long years, three years since I slept through the night, three years since she ate a morsel of food without sticking a needle in her finger and then a bigger one in her thigh.

She likes to celebrate, I like to drown my sorrows.  Her way seems to be more positive so we go along with that whilst I sneak in a glass of wine.

This year she is celebrating with a couple of friends, by destroying my lounge….

I look back over the last three years and I am pretty proud of how far we have come.  For a while Type One was all we could think about, and some days when Diabetes plays hard ball, it still is.  But in the main, we have figured out a balance where we keep it with us, all the time, but it doesn’t dominate, or dictate, and it NEVER stops us doing anything we desire.

But still, whilst we cope, and Molly, in general copes really well, it is still a condition that shouldn’t be taken for granted.  It is still a chronic condition that very little is known about and that the media do naff all to explain.  Its brother in law (not by blood), Type 2, gets all the glory, sucks up all the money and confuses most about what Type One is.

It’s an autoimmune disease – nothing to do with diet folks.

Molly hit an all time low this week, she asked me to take away her diabetes, she cried and stomped her feet and finally asked, ‘why me mummy?’.  She also asked if she could just, ‘have one week off?’

One week without needles, one week without weighing food, one week without counting every carbohydrate that she consumes, one week without having to deal with low blood sugars that make her tremble, give her headaches, and make her brain go slow.

One week with highs that cause irritability, irrationality, and general crap moods, one week without having to think about the impact running around with her friends will have on her bloods, one week without having to find an outfit that hides her pump as she hates telling people what it is.

I didn’t even have a chance to comment, before she answered herself.

“I’d die Mummy, wouldn’t I? I’d die if I had a week off?”

Nine years old and my daughter has been forced to accept her own mortality, she already knows what may end her life one day, she knows what she has won’t ever go away, and unless she manages it every second, then it will simply manage her with devasting consequences.

When I was nine my biggest worries were would my mum take me ice skating on the weekend and was I going to be ‘packed in’ by my new boyfriend on Monday at school.

But still Molly wants to celebrate.

Three years of living with this godforsaken, shitty, relentless condition.

And for that….

She can destroy as many rooms in my house as she wants…..

Happy Third Diaversary Molly, you make me incredibly proud.

 

 

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