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Child Diabetes Essay

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In today’s world, parents have an abundance of worries when it comes to their children. Drugs, bad grades, and pre marital sex are just some things that may plague a parent with sleepless nights. But even on the worst of those nights of worry, most parents can’t imagine that their child could face an illness. Not just a runny nose or seasonal flu, but an illness that would affect their child throughout his or her entire life. Diabetes is a disease without a cure, and one that more, and more children have to live with.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that begins when the pancreas quits making insulin. Insulin plays a key role by letting glucose enter the body’s cells, and then uses it for energy. When the body doesn’t get the …show more content…

Sporting events, church activities, chores, playing and homework take up most of a child’s waking hours. The monitoring and treatment of this disease affects everything the child does and in turn affects the entire family. Keeping the insulin levels within normal limits requires diligent monitoring of blood glucose levels and managing the child’s diet is extremely important. When blood glucose levels fall out of the normal range the main treatment for Type 1 Diabetes requires insulin therapy. The Insulin therapy is needed to replace or supplement what insulin the body can’t provide. Some factors that affect blood glucose levels are: insulin, food, activity, exercise, and stress ( Daneman, Frank & Perlman,1999). Because of the difficulties that families with child diabetes face it is hard for the families not to revolve everything they do around the child. Although there is no easy answer to this problem HK Akerblom explains it well,“ Insulin therapy should be fitted into the daily schedule and way of life of the child and the family, rather than the child and family living their lives according to a strict timetable determined by the insulin therapy”(1998).
Unlike Type 1 Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes has generally been seen as a disease that adults develop; it was once commonly called adult-onset diabetes. Although, studies have shown that the number of children developing the disease is

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