"To be Jealous of a Disease" - An Essay by Jack Heldring
My name is Jack Heldring and I’m eleven years old. When my younger brother Peter was three, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The disease has been in our family since. It feels funny to say this about a disease but sometimes I am seriously jealous of Type 1 Diabetes.
The first example is kind of obvious. Sometimes when my brother goes high or low, diabetes gets a ton of attention from my mom and dad. My parents will be in my brother’s room reading to him and I will be making myself cereal for dinner.
Other times when we are somewhere fun and I am enjoying myself, we will have to leave because Peter's blood sugar is high or low. Once we were at Flying Circus and I had just gotten up the ninja wall. I was so excited, and I wanted my dad to see me do it again, but we had to leave because Peter was low. I remember how I felt sad and kind of mad at diabetes. It was almost like diabetes was getting what it wanted and didn’t care what anyone else thought.
There are lots of smaller things that also make me feel envious. Diabetes will sometimes stay up later than me. Diabetes sometimes gets snacks when I don’t, if Peter is low. Or it prohibits me from having a snack when I want one, like if Peter is high. Diabetes even got a phone before me!*
I use this in life. One thing this has taught me is to not blame others for things I know they can’t control. Sometimes I want to blame diabetes on Peter but I know that it’s not his fault. I even use this with myself. Like when I am playing soccer and I miss a difficult shot, I always tell myself that it was not my fault, and that there are just some things in life I can’t control.
*Diabetes has a phone to relay real-time blood sugar readings from a device on Peter’s body to his parents. Jack has a phone that shows YouTube videos of dudes pulling pranks.
