I’ll always remember the Christmas of 2010 well. It was our first Christmas at home and not at relatives houses. We tailored our Christmas meal for our daughter with Type 1 diabetes. It was simple, only the dinner rolls had carbs, everything else was carb free (or very low carb). This would mean she would only need a small dose of insulin from her insulin pump for that roll.

This was not a typical Christmas dinner, but we are no longer a typical family, our lives revolve around our kids health. I won’t list all the food, but there was chicken, cheese, celery sticks with peanut butter on them and a ton of other food. We all chowed down like wild animals, the food was good and we were hungry. After dinner we left all the no-carb snacks on the table so we could graze all we wanted.

I remember vividly being in the dinning room after dinner and my d-daughter walked into the room. She had her normal mischievous smile on her face, what 4 year old does not have a smile like that. She looked up at me with her big eyes and ask “can I have more?”. I told her she could have all she wanted, “it’s all carb free I said”. The smile she had I can not describe, but it was the best smile ever. Because in that moment she got to shove diabetes aside. It was a smile of happiness and I enjoyed it and will the rest of my life.

When the day comes that there is a cure for diabetes, I will bet she will have the same smile. A cure for Type 1 diabetes, that would be the best Christmas gift for my girls with diabetes. The day their immune systems will be restored to proper function and will not longer attack the wrong thing. They day their pancreases will function like mine does.