Ask D"Mine: Fathers Rock (Or Try To!)

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Happy impending Father’s Day. Which is tomorrow.

In honor of this yearly day celebrating dads, we have a special edition of our weekly diabetes advice column Ask D"Mine. Here I am, your host Wil Dubois -- someone who"s been living with type 1 diabetes for 12 years and works professionally as a diabetes specialist in a New Mexico clinic.

And yes, I"m also a dad for the past 14 years. Although my kiddo doesn"t live with diabetes, he knows it well thanks to it being a part of my life. A sibling of his, as it were.

According to Wikipedia, the modern nod to the social role of the sperm donor dates back to 1908 (the same year as the first Mother’s Day) but was spawned by a tragedy in Monogah, West Virginia. In what’s generally regarded as the worst mining disaster in American history, an explosion in the Fairmont Coal Company’s Number 6 and Number 8 mines killed 367 men—250 of them fathers—leaving over 1,000 children fatherless.

Well, that’s a rather grim beginning to a holiday that’s now mainly known for beer steins and ugly ties. But it brings me nicely to my subject of diabetes and dads, as I think most of us will concede that diabetes is at least a minor tragedy, although it can have many silver linings, and it sure beats the hell out of being killed in a coal mine explosion.

So let’s talk about diabetes and dads. In looking at the diabetes ecosystem, we see two kinds of fathers:

D-dads. These are men who are, generally, sugar-normals who have diabetic children. Again, generally, these kiddos are type 1s. Naturally there are some men with diabetes who have children with diabetes, and some D-dads are fathers to the growing number of kids who have type 2 diabetes.

Men with diabetes. Llike me, these are the guys who have sugar-normal kids but are pancreatically-challenged themselves.

In both cases, I would say that mixing fatherhood with diabetes in any way whatsoever makes the world’s hardest job even harder.

I think we can agree that most D-dads rock. Some are amazing hands-on caregivers and advocates who are fully engaged with their D-kids. Others work two jobs to bring home the bacon to keep a roof over the family’s head and cover the extraordinary costs of having diabetes in the family. Both kinds of D-dads fill important roles, and I confess to getting hot under the collar when I hear those who must work harder being “trashed” for not being more engaged in a hands-on way, but I talked about that a couple of years ago, so this year, I want to focus on the men who have to take care of their own diabetes… and their children.

Do we rock, too?

Any of you readers with diabetes know just how damn hard this disease can be. Even when we are totally engaged, totally on the ball, and doing everything 100% right, the shit hits the fan with frightening regularity. Diabetes leaves us confused. Depressed. Angry. Tired. Scared and scarred.

You all know this.

What you might not know, if you are a lady or a man without children (yet), is that fatherhood is not unlike diabetes: It’s 100% demanding, 100% of the time. It’s relentless and all-consuming. But unlike diabetes, it’s also tremendously rewarding.

Oh dear. The mothers are getting hot under the collar, saying we have it easy compared to them. I disagree. I think that both motherhood and fatherhood are hard. But they are different jobs, different roles, and I don’t think they are so easy to compare. I think men, by nature, are as nurturing as women, but societal pressures place an emphasis on the provider role over the caregiver role, and that can make it hard for many men to achieve the balance their souls desire.

But that’s neither here nor there. Back to blood and sugar being thicker than water.

Diabetes is like an out-of-control teenager. It takes tremendous mental and physical bandwidth. Combine that with the fact that the majority of fathers work at least one job outside the home and you have the recipe for a person who is hanging on by their proverbial fingernails. And yet, when those big brown (or blue) eyes of our children demand that we be fully engaged, healthy, and happy parents, we summon super-human strength and rise to the task.

Or sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes we snap at our kids. Sometimes we are too exhausted by work and diabetes to help assemble that new toy. Sometimes we are weak when we want to be strong, impatient when we want to be patient. Sometimes we can’t go for a walk or play catch because our blood sugar is too low and it would kill us. Literally.

And in all these times when we can’t rise to the level of our instinctive desires because of the biological roadblocks placed in front of us, we feel like crap. We feel like failures in our most important role. This guilt is a heavy burden to carry, along with our syringes, meters, and glucose tablets. There’s nothing worse than being physically unable to rise to the level of your good intentions.

Yes, it’s hard (but rewarding) work to be a good father. And it’s hard (but rewarding) work to be a “good” diabetic. Being both? Hard doesn’t begin to describe it.

So if you have a dad with diabetes in your ecosystem, give him two Father’s Day gifts this year. After all, he’s working twice as hard as any other father.

Got any questions you"d like to see addressed on Ask D"Mine? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn"t adhere to Healthline"s editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline"s partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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