You’ll be  able  to manage  your diabetes mostly by yourself, using your  health care professionals as expert  advisors. And it’s what I’ve taught the  thousands of patients that I’ve worked  with over the past 35 years as a  diabetes nurse educator and family  therapist; teaching people how to go  mountain climbing or travel in the desert  by camel or play sports or be actors and  on and on and “take their diabetes  along” managing it effectively and helping them gain a sense of competence and confidence in themselves as they take on more and more of the management role over time.

 

It’s both my personal and professional belief that having diabetes  shouldn’t stop you from doing anything  that you want to do! And to do that, in the fullest and most enriching way  possible, you need to learn how to “take  it along” and manage it effectively. That’s  what this book is about – teaching you  and your family how to take it with you  wherever you go, to complain about it  from time to time because it is a pain in the butt, but not let it stop you from unfolding into the lives that were yours  before you got diagnosed.

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As doctors,  nurses,  dietitians,  social workers  and  psychologists working in diabetes we are obligated to  provide you and your child with all the  knowledge and information that you need  to  get  on  with  your  lives.  My clinical goal when working with kids and  families is to give them as much as  information and support as possible and  to provide them with what they need to  make their lives after diagnosis look as  close as possible as to what their lives  looked like before diagnosis. We as  healthcare professionals owe you that!

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And it is an achievable goal!