DOUBLE TROUBLE

By the time Eddie had turned three, he’d been diagnosed with both type 1 diabetes and coeliac disease. Four years on, while he still faces unique challenges, Eddie’s future looks hopeful. Here, his mum Andrea Smith shares their story

- KAREN FITTALL

In some ways, Eddie’s diabetes gets easier to manage the older he gets – and in other ways it becomes more challenging, or at least challenging in different ways. For example, he’s much more comfortable with us injecting him now than he was as a three-year-old. And the insulin pump we started using 12 months after he was diagnosed, combined with the continuous glucose monitoring system he’s got, has allowed us to gain much finer control of his blood [glucose] levels and means we can be more flexible with how much he eats. Gone are the days when we could only let him have half a banana, which would trigger a tantrum because he didn’t understand why he couldn’t eat the whole thing. But on the other hand, every birthday that passes brings opportunities for new adventures and experiences, things like sleepovers, many of which he can’t enjoy.

Unless someone is there who we trust to manage his diabetes, either myself or his dad, Campbell, needs to be close by. That’s quite restrictive for a seven-year-old.

An added complication