What Does Diabetes Look Like?

I am still not sure I have the answer to this question.

When I started this blog, and its Facebook page with the same name, I knew I needed an image for it.

As a photographer, I was completely stumped. Give me any other subject, and I will have something in my stock that is relevant. Or I can come up an image.

But trying to visually capture diabetes left me empty and uninspired. The people, and especially the children, who deal with it inspire me beyond words. But artistically, it just wasn’t doing anything for me.

I went to Google Images for inspiration. There was nothing there but images of feet gone bad. (One of the many reasons why it is important to manage your diabetes.)

Scary to the point of motivating, but far from inspirational.

I went to my Type 1 son who is an artistic child who loves to sketch and paint. I asked him what diabetes looks like. Could he draw a picture of diabetes?

He thought for several seconds. “I don’t know”, he replied. Not a bad thing I thought – diabetes just is.

I turned to the picture below of our diabetes notebook that I use to communicate daily with the school nurse.

But this is only one aspect of diabetes. It does give some insight into one of the many small, nagging things we do on a daily basis, but it is not the whole picture.

So, what does diabetes look like? It looks like the image you see at the top of this post. This is my son, happily scooting along on the last day of one of our spring break vacations.

He is healthy and happy. He is full of life and everything good in the world. The only prominent sign of anything diabetic on him is his insulin pump.

This is diabetes. This is inspiration.

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