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Home > Knowledge & support > Resource hub > “A cure is the miracle we dream of”
Before diagnosis, Charlotte was your average, ordinary five-year-old girl who just loved being out and about and taking part in sports. We were away on a family summer break when we started to notice that Charlotte was out of sorts but nothing that really worried us at first. She was really tired, but we just thought it was the summer holidays. It was warm, and we were doing a lot of travelling.
She was asking for lots of drinks, and then she started wetting the bed. Looking back, that was the one thing out of everything that was most out of character for her. On our way back home to Aberdeen, we had to stop almost every few minutes for her to go to the toilet, and every time she would ask for more to drink. She was in and out of sleep constantly, and it really wasn’t like her.
The next morning, I phoned the doctor. They asked me to bring her down straight away. They checked her urine and told me to take her to hospital. I remember us getting to hospital and being met with a group of doctors and nurses and at that point, as a mum, you are thinking this is even worse than I thought it was.
They did another urine test and a blood test and told us that Charlotte had type 1 diabetes. We stayed in hospital for a week while Charlotte was getting better and the hospital could be sure we knew what we were doing. We essentially were becoming her pancreas, monitoring her blood levels, injecting her multiple times a day, and carb counting for meals.
Fast forward to today, Charlotte is doing well. She has grown up much faster than her peers, and we have seen an immense strength and fight in her that although we wish we would never have had to see makes us so proud. She has good days and days that are more challenging, but she is doing well at school and is a keen golfer.
Today, Charlotte is on the hybrid closed loop Omnipod pump with the Libre 2 Plus. This is her second pump, and she especially likes not having tubes between the pump and her body.
If I could give any advice to other parents of newly diagnosed children, it would be this: allow yourselves time to adjust to the new reality. Do not blame yourself and do not think you should be able to fix it. There are so many people who have been and are going through what you are going through, you are not alone.
Connecting with other families at Breakthrough T1D events also helped a lot.
And what would a cure feel like to us? A cure is the miracle we dream of. We dream that Charlotte does not have a future of constant monitoring, the worry of long-term damage to organs, and sudden hypos. We are so proud of Charlotte, but a cure would let our little girl and many other little girls not have to grow up so quickly and simply have a childhood like other kids do.
Your donations help us fund projects in the most promising areas of type 1 research. Will you donate today and help us keep pushing for a cure?
The National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (NASS) is the newest member of our innovative autoimmune research initiative, Connect Immune Research.
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1970, when I was 27. I became very unwell and weak; I wasn’t particularly thirsty, which is the first thing everybody assumes. I felt similar to when I had had glandular fever in 1965.
Read an interview with best-selling author Annabel Steadman and discover the latest on update on teplizumab.
Our research is improving the lives of people with type 1 and making strides towards a cure. We’ll keep pushing until we make type 1 diabetes a thing of the past.
