So in my quest to get answers in a place that only brought up more questions every single day…I remembered being to a ‘Finn Fest’ in Toronto long before my son was ever diagnosed. ‘Finn Fest’ is a celebrations of people of Finnish decent happening once a year all over the world.
There just so happened to be a booth at the festival looking for type 1 diabetics within the community. They were trying to see how many in Canada – or at the festival had some family member who was a type 1 diabetic. I thought it unusual. I remember asking my father about it. He had no idea. As far as we knew there was no family history of type 1 in either of our bloodlines (my ex’s family nor me).
Beginning to look it up and again looking for answers as to where this diagnosis/disease came from…the hospital right off the bat said that there was no known cause for Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).
I was still searching for answers. How could he get is ‘disease’? Where did it come from? What was his life going to be like from here on in? How could something like this strike a child so young? How is this going to impact our lives? I wanted answers! I needed answers! I was looking for someone or something to blame for this new ‘normal’.
Factoid: the largest number of type 1 diabetics is in Finland and I am of Finnish decent. (2nd generation Canadian) That was the only logical reason for my son having this disease.
There it was as plain as day – I blamed myself.
It wasn’t until 8-9 years later that my son’s new doctor outside of the Hospital for Sick Kids let me off the hook. Apparently, T1D is not hereditary – type 2 is. 8 years of carrying that burden lifted by one simple truth. I truly needed to know that.
You can and will drive yourself crazy looking for answers where there are none. There is no one to blame here. It just felt better to have some kind of hint as to how this could happen. Unfortunately, it just does!
Don’t go looking for answers where there isn’t any and do not waste energy on blaming yourself (or others). You cannot get that energy back and you truthfully need to spend it elsewhere where it can serve you better. Let yourself off the hook and take care of the two of you.