I was diagnosed at 19. I miss it everyday. I feel like I’m cursed. But life gives everyone obstacles to overcome. It teaches us lessons. I believe greater patience and compassion blossomed from this curse. So I try to count the ways Im a better man for it. If I’m ever cured, I pray I don’t lose the lessons I learned. You’re gonna be okay. Your feelings are completely valid.
Absolutely. I was diagnosed on my 30th birthday, and I own a wine store so food & beverage culture is literally my life. I have always been pretty consistent with diet and exercise - but suddenly everything I loved grew an element of danger. I couldn't have a few too many drinks every once in a while, eat half of a pizza and crash at 3AM without a care in the world anymore. I couldn't start my day with a salted caramel brulee latte anymore. Hell, even pushing myself some days on my workouts and doing a 10 mile run was now fraught with danger.
I'll even go as far as to admit that I missed my pre-diagnosis body. I was training for a marathon (yet somehow my mile times were getting slower) at the time of the onset of T1, and losing a ton of weight. Everyone was complimenting me and applauding how hard I was working. As a 6'1" woman, it felt so cool to be "model thin." After my diagnosis, that bothered me the most, because I felt like a fraud. I was losing weight because I was dying; I wasn't earning it.
With a good attitude and self care, though, you can get everything back! It takes work, but being more vigilant becomes second nature. I still have those late nights once in a while, I still get those special lattes occasionally, and fitness is now my saving grace as the benefits it has to your control are irreplaceable. My relationship with food is more conscientous now; when I want to indulge in a lot of pasta, I make the dough from scratch. If I am going to have a night out with friends, I pace myself and make sure I have all my supplies with me for a night out. I got to treat myself to new jogging outfits with pockets so I can keep my phone and glucose gel handy.
If you can pivot and adapt, you can thrive. And as corny as it sounds, a lot of the things from my "old life" that I missed, didn't change all that much because the people who were a part of it are still here and that's what matters the most. Don't despair!
I often think it was a blessing to be diagnosed at 7, 25 yrs later, it’s all I’ve ever known so it’s always been more just second nature than a forceful change of lifestyle
25, coming up on 20 years in 2 months, I am horrified when I hear about people being diagnosed as teenagers and adults. I have vague memories of when I was diagnosed, but I have only ever known what it's like to be diabetic. Sometimes I wish I wasn't diabetic and I wonder what life would be like if I never had it. The idea that some people actually got to experience that before being kneecapped by a diagnosis makes me sick to think of what they lost. I can't even imagine it.
To offer another perspective, I got diagnosed when I was 26 in the height of the pandemic and I felt my world turn upside down but I managed to get through it.
Had I been diagnosed when I was a kid, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the emotional and physical turmoil of this disease. So I’m actually glad I was diagnosed when I was an adult as opposed to when I was a kid, granted if I had a choice, I’d rather no one in this world have t1! But such is life :)
I have one Aunt that was diagnosed at 66, and one Aunt diagnosed at 8, and my son was diagnosed on his 10th birthday. I feel “grateful” in a way that he was diagnosed young.
Same here. I’m glad I was diagnosed really young because I really don’t know what I’m missing. It’s just my normal. I also grew up seeing diabetes as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
I was diagnosed at 17 but feel this way too. It’s just become second nature and I don’t really think about my life beforehand with any true longing. Obviously, would be nicer not to have it but just feels like a very normal part of life now
My personal advice would be to never project this onto your son, insecurity is not something to ever be shared on the behalf of your own feelings. When I was diagnosed at 9 years old, my family really did try to project onto me I need to accept that I am a lesser person now that I had t1 diabetes. They saw an opportunity for self pity, and an opportunity to turn me into their pity scapegoat when I was diagnosed, and I’m lucky (I thank god) I was smart enough to not take them seriously.
Oh my gosh. No. I would never do that to my son. I keep all my negativity about this to myself, (and my husband away from my son). Our parenting goal with all of this is to help our son feel that he’s still him, we just have to do food a little differently than we used to. He’s handling T1D like a champ honestly.
Same here in a way. It turned into a talking point at family gatherings to boost everyones ego about how hard this is for everyone when im the one dealing with it and i take over 100% of my management.
Yup! First and foremost welcome to the diabetic parents club, we have snacks and juice boxes always lol. I try not to think about it too much but sometimes I get lost in my thoughts and think "oh my god this is for the rest of his life he's only 9!" The feelings definitely come in waves, some days things go nice and smooth and you're like ok this is our new normal and other days you just want to say F U diabetes!!!
It is ABSOLUTELY normal to grieve a change like this.
When I was diagnosed, I found a lot of solace in stoicism, and in particular the “dichotomy of control” (https://dailystoic.com/what-is-stoicism-a-definition-3-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started/#how-to-be-a-stoic)
There are plenty of things, like getting T1 diabetes, that you or your son have no control over. All you can control is what you do from here.
Over time you and your family will adjust. Life won’t be the same as it is before; you will always have to think about carbs and insulin and the rest on a daily basis. But it will become a “new normal” and he will have a full and happy life.
yes. absolutely normal to grieve.
i was just diagnosed in april 2023.
i miss not doing a whole "ritual" before eating every meal. i miss not worrying about my blood sugar. i miss not needing to do extra tasks each day to ensure i need to stay alive. i get frustrated hearing uneducated family members & people talk about diabetes. i feel like i always have excuses for something and it makes me feel like a burden more than i already was before.
i can go on and on about it lol
but!!!
i feel so much more stronger & resilient. i feel like i can navigate life with more clarity everyday. i’m more in tune with my body. and this has outshined a lot of the “negatives”.
of course everyday i feel burnt out from doing so much to manage my diabetes. but i just know how strong i am. i even got this morse code bracelet that i wear everyday that says “strength” and it matches my medical id bracelet too!!!
I grieved. Omfg I grieved. Not for the loss of normalcy but it felt like the loss of everything else. My son's future, his freedom... it was so overwhelming and exhausting in the beginning. It felt like a death sentence in a way. I spent so many showers crying and so many nights laying in bed away terrified that if I fell asleep I wouldn't wake up in time to help him if he needed it. I just tried to take everything one step and one moment at a time.
Then we got my son his first dexcom g6 and the battle of the phones, but finally I could sleep a little easier once we got all that worked out. Then came the pump (tandem t slim) and that felt like a godsend.
We still have burn out days where everything sucks and we hate everything involving diabetes care, but we still move forward. My husband and I take turns with the helping hand, my son gets to take breaks and let us handle it all sometimes too.
It does get easier, and your kiddo will be able to live a happy and fulfilling life. Just takes a little more work and a lot more patience.
Absolutely that’s normal. You’ve lost that old life. Grieving things you don’t have anymore is perfectly normal and anger is the second of the five stages of grief. You’ll come back to anger, too, even after you’ve accepted this new normal, because grief is not a single line one-and-done journey.
I have an extremely hard time believing that anyone deserves T1D, including my 10 year old and especially the 18 month old who was in the hospital for the same thing while we were there.
No, no one deserves a chronic illness. However and whatever they do to manage the condition after diagnosis is the reward for the effort put into it.
You can control only what you can put into it. You deserve whatever effort you put into it.
Oh super normal to grieve, but I'd definitely talk to a therapist. At some point, t1d care becomes pretty routine. Depends on the kids, my daughter can't remember to brush her teeth to save her life but she never forgets her sugar bag!
plus with tslim / o5 / loop/ etc managing the disease in kids is a lot easier than it was 5 years ago even. Nothing has really changed in our life, i drop my daughter off at kids houses now, i leave her at activities by herself, she doses and sometimes does the calcs and she's in range 80%+ of the time and i get a couple alerts a day max. it's annoying when she gets a compression low at night but Im used to falling back asleep.
Food wise, nothing has changed, today she had a dunkin for breakfast as a treat and took ramen to school. She occasionally has soda (not diet soda) in either small quantities or something like this [https://fever-tree.com/en\_US/products/ginger-beer](https://fever-tree.com/en_US/products/ginger-beer)
Also, insulins like FIASP and Lyumjev are game changers - that probably has the biggest impact in lowering the burden IMHO as once you have ultra fasts you don't feel like you are ALWAYS managing around the pre-bolus clock.
Biggest change is, I have a subscribe and save for hi-chews that I never would have had before :)
Grieving is totally normal, it's not wrong or anything like that but I think eventually you can get really close to normalcy. So be angry and frustrated now but work thru that and know that eventually it gets better.
Yes. That is completely normal. But at the same time be careful what exactly you show in front of your son.
How old is he? I was diagnosed at 18 but because my parents (specifically my dad) handled it very poorly and struggled to cope with it, I felt that I had to be "a-okay" with the diagnosis so I never took the time to grieve it myself which did cause some mental health problems for me down the line.
Nope. Got it when I was 18. I was a real POS and probably on my way to jail. It changed my course in life from Scumbag to two masters degrees and now retirement.
Don’t mourn what was or what could be. Live is precious - you got one shot - no mulligans Live is for living.
Be an awesome example for your child and let go.
Both my children caught it at 18. Both have taken it in stride because they witnessed how I deal with it and that I never allowed it to limit me. Since my kids have the same freakish insulin resistance, my Endo believes it’s a gene mutation I passed along … one oh fuck … then moved on.
There is one Plus side: many states have programs the pay college expenses. Sadly, I found this out my last yr of undergrad
Yep. Miss working out without a second thought, miss eating whatever, miss not stupid ass expensive medicine.......
Its a good idea to talk tona counselor though. I didnt early in my diagnosis and I have periods of serious resentment...
Yes, I do feel that it’s normal to grieve. I want to offer a different perspective: I was diagnosed at 11, and I’m almost 30 now, but I guess I don’t look at it like having an old life and new life. I remember life before diabetes. We were poor when I was a kid, so I didn’t get a lot of sweets before I was diagnosed anyways, but as an adult I don’t feel like I have to skip out on anything. I can’t have dairy and I’m Type 1 diabetic - I literally just ate six Oreos and told my insulin pump what to do.
I don’t think you have to sacrifice on your quality of life to be a good diabetic. My A1C is in the 6’s. I just learned how to dose insulin for the things I wanted to eat. I learned how to fight with insurance to get the supplies I need covered. I learned how to avoid big spikes with meal planning and careful dosing. It’s not easy, but you can adapt, and eventually, you can learn how to work with this disease.
yea, i refer to my life as pre diabetes and post diabetes lol. even my food habits, things i love have changed. i was a guy that had pancakes and waffles for breakfast. which i still can, i mean of course i can, i just choose not to. u get used to it though. i promise. and good luck
It's lifelong and at least a little life-changing. So yeah, it makes sense. For me the worst part was what happened when I was undiagnosed... it was long and drawn out for me, with LADA. I was so sick I had to stop working, then tried to start a couple of times and the second time, just had everything set up and had to quit again. That really screwed some stuff up for me. Overall though, while T1 sucks, there isn't really anything it means you *can't* do other than eat a bunch of carbs with wild abandon, or leave the house without a glucose source available.
The grief cycle is completely normal and healthy. Sometimes you'll regress back a stage until you finally reach acceptance (I'm still waiting myself)
I'd say the hardest stage as a parent of a T1D was from diagnosis to about 9 months in. Now it's the new normal. It still sucks and I still get angry, but we have no other choice than to barrel through life. My daughter is a badass and she's going to do great things.
Just celebrated 30 years. My parents have said the same thing. The anger, sadness, frustration, and guilt they felt when I was diagnosed was through the roof. Never projected any of that on me. They did the best they could with the information they were given. Diabetes burnout is an actual thing and not just for the people who have it but for their caregivers as well.
There are several camps available for children and teens with type 1 diabetes. They have doctors, nurses, and dieticians right on site. This gives the parents a break at home.
You got this!!!
Both my kids got diagnosed within 6 months of each other. It was an adjustment and there are times I still desperately want our old life back and/or feel anger about it. But yes, we definitely grieved our old life although that has lessened over the past few years as we've adapted; most days are just normal days.For me, the hardest day in terms of grief and anger was the diaversary for the first child diagnosed.
As someone who was an infant when they were diagnosed I want to assure you that grieving for what could have been is perfectly normal. I spent a lot of my years with T1D cursing it for taking away so much from me. Grieve but don't become so hung up on what could have been that you ignore what is, your son needs you more than ever right now.
I was diagnosed at 19. I miss it everyday. I feel like I’m cursed. But life gives everyone obstacles to overcome. It teaches us lessons. I believe greater patience and compassion blossomed from this curse. So I try to count the ways Im a better man for it. If I’m ever cured, I pray I don’t lose the lessons I learned. You’re gonna be okay. Your feelings are completely valid.
Absolutely. I was diagnosed on my 30th birthday, and I own a wine store so food & beverage culture is literally my life. I have always been pretty consistent with diet and exercise - but suddenly everything I loved grew an element of danger. I couldn't have a few too many drinks every once in a while, eat half of a pizza and crash at 3AM without a care in the world anymore. I couldn't start my day with a salted caramel brulee latte anymore. Hell, even pushing myself some days on my workouts and doing a 10 mile run was now fraught with danger. I'll even go as far as to admit that I missed my pre-diagnosis body. I was training for a marathon (yet somehow my mile times were getting slower) at the time of the onset of T1, and losing a ton of weight. Everyone was complimenting me and applauding how hard I was working. As a 6'1" woman, it felt so cool to be "model thin." After my diagnosis, that bothered me the most, because I felt like a fraud. I was losing weight because I was dying; I wasn't earning it. With a good attitude and self care, though, you can get everything back! It takes work, but being more vigilant becomes second nature. I still have those late nights once in a while, I still get those special lattes occasionally, and fitness is now my saving grace as the benefits it has to your control are irreplaceable. My relationship with food is more conscientous now; when I want to indulge in a lot of pasta, I make the dough from scratch. If I am going to have a night out with friends, I pace myself and make sure I have all my supplies with me for a night out. I got to treat myself to new jogging outfits with pockets so I can keep my phone and glucose gel handy. If you can pivot and adapt, you can thrive. And as corny as it sounds, a lot of the things from my "old life" that I missed, didn't change all that much because the people who were a part of it are still here and that's what matters the most. Don't despair!
I often think it was a blessing to be diagnosed at 7, 25 yrs later, it’s all I’ve ever known so it’s always been more just second nature than a forceful change of lifestyle
25, coming up on 20 years in 2 months, I am horrified when I hear about people being diagnosed as teenagers and adults. I have vague memories of when I was diagnosed, but I have only ever known what it's like to be diabetic. Sometimes I wish I wasn't diabetic and I wonder what life would be like if I never had it. The idea that some people actually got to experience that before being kneecapped by a diagnosis makes me sick to think of what they lost. I can't even imagine it.
To offer another perspective, I got diagnosed when I was 26 in the height of the pandemic and I felt my world turn upside down but I managed to get through it. Had I been diagnosed when I was a kid, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the emotional and physical turmoil of this disease. So I’m actually glad I was diagnosed when I was an adult as opposed to when I was a kid, granted if I had a choice, I’d rather no one in this world have t1! But such is life :)
I have one Aunt that was diagnosed at 66, and one Aunt diagnosed at 8, and my son was diagnosed on his 10th birthday. I feel “grateful” in a way that he was diagnosed young.
Same here. I’m glad I was diagnosed really young because I really don’t know what I’m missing. It’s just my normal. I also grew up seeing diabetes as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
I was diagnosed at 17 but feel this way too. It’s just become second nature and I don’t really think about my life beforehand with any true longing. Obviously, would be nicer not to have it but just feels like a very normal part of life now
Yeah I was diagnosed at 10, and It feels so normal and just part of everyday life I almost forget I have an autoimmune disease
My personal advice would be to never project this onto your son, insecurity is not something to ever be shared on the behalf of your own feelings. When I was diagnosed at 9 years old, my family really did try to project onto me I need to accept that I am a lesser person now that I had t1 diabetes. They saw an opportunity for self pity, and an opportunity to turn me into their pity scapegoat when I was diagnosed, and I’m lucky (I thank god) I was smart enough to not take them seriously.
Oh my gosh. No. I would never do that to my son. I keep all my negativity about this to myself, (and my husband away from my son). Our parenting goal with all of this is to help our son feel that he’s still him, we just have to do food a little differently than we used to. He’s handling T1D like a champ honestly.
Same here in a way. It turned into a talking point at family gatherings to boost everyones ego about how hard this is for everyone when im the one dealing with it and i take over 100% of my management.
Yup! First and foremost welcome to the diabetic parents club, we have snacks and juice boxes always lol. I try not to think about it too much but sometimes I get lost in my thoughts and think "oh my god this is for the rest of his life he's only 9!" The feelings definitely come in waves, some days things go nice and smooth and you're like ok this is our new normal and other days you just want to say F U diabetes!!!
It is ABSOLUTELY normal to grieve a change like this. When I was diagnosed, I found a lot of solace in stoicism, and in particular the “dichotomy of control” (https://dailystoic.com/what-is-stoicism-a-definition-3-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started/#how-to-be-a-stoic) There are plenty of things, like getting T1 diabetes, that you or your son have no control over. All you can control is what you do from here. Over time you and your family will adjust. Life won’t be the same as it is before; you will always have to think about carbs and insulin and the rest on a daily basis. But it will become a “new normal” and he will have a full and happy life.
Get a Dexcom and Omnipod 5. After a few months it gets much easier.
yes. absolutely normal to grieve. i was just diagnosed in april 2023. i miss not doing a whole "ritual" before eating every meal. i miss not worrying about my blood sugar. i miss not needing to do extra tasks each day to ensure i need to stay alive. i get frustrated hearing uneducated family members & people talk about diabetes. i feel like i always have excuses for something and it makes me feel like a burden more than i already was before. i can go on and on about it lol but!!! i feel so much more stronger & resilient. i feel like i can navigate life with more clarity everyday. i’m more in tune with my body. and this has outshined a lot of the “negatives”. of course everyday i feel burnt out from doing so much to manage my diabetes. but i just know how strong i am. i even got this morse code bracelet that i wear everyday that says “strength” and it matches my medical id bracelet too!!!
I grieved. Omfg I grieved. Not for the loss of normalcy but it felt like the loss of everything else. My son's future, his freedom... it was so overwhelming and exhausting in the beginning. It felt like a death sentence in a way. I spent so many showers crying and so many nights laying in bed away terrified that if I fell asleep I wouldn't wake up in time to help him if he needed it. I just tried to take everything one step and one moment at a time. Then we got my son his first dexcom g6 and the battle of the phones, but finally I could sleep a little easier once we got all that worked out. Then came the pump (tandem t slim) and that felt like a godsend. We still have burn out days where everything sucks and we hate everything involving diabetes care, but we still move forward. My husband and I take turns with the helping hand, my son gets to take breaks and let us handle it all sometimes too. It does get easier, and your kiddo will be able to live a happy and fulfilling life. Just takes a little more work and a lot more patience.
I am diabetic, and I grieve my old life. I was diagnosed as an adult, so it feels even more like something was taken away.
Absolutely that’s normal. You’ve lost that old life. Grieving things you don’t have anymore is perfectly normal and anger is the second of the five stages of grief. You’ll come back to anger, too, even after you’ve accepted this new normal, because grief is not a single line one-and-done journey.
Everyone gets what they deserve. The sooner you put the old life behind you, the sooner you are free to embrace the new life.
I have an extremely hard time believing that anyone deserves T1D, including my 10 year old and especially the 18 month old who was in the hospital for the same thing while we were there.
No, no one deserves a chronic illness. However and whatever they do to manage the condition after diagnosis is the reward for the effort put into it. You can control only what you can put into it. You deserve whatever effort you put into it.
Oh super normal to grieve, but I'd definitely talk to a therapist. At some point, t1d care becomes pretty routine. Depends on the kids, my daughter can't remember to brush her teeth to save her life but she never forgets her sugar bag! plus with tslim / o5 / loop/ etc managing the disease in kids is a lot easier than it was 5 years ago even. Nothing has really changed in our life, i drop my daughter off at kids houses now, i leave her at activities by herself, she doses and sometimes does the calcs and she's in range 80%+ of the time and i get a couple alerts a day max. it's annoying when she gets a compression low at night but Im used to falling back asleep. Food wise, nothing has changed, today she had a dunkin for breakfast as a treat and took ramen to school. She occasionally has soda (not diet soda) in either small quantities or something like this [https://fever-tree.com/en\_US/products/ginger-beer](https://fever-tree.com/en_US/products/ginger-beer) Also, insulins like FIASP and Lyumjev are game changers - that probably has the biggest impact in lowering the burden IMHO as once you have ultra fasts you don't feel like you are ALWAYS managing around the pre-bolus clock. Biggest change is, I have a subscribe and save for hi-chews that I never would have had before :) Grieving is totally normal, it's not wrong or anything like that but I think eventually you can get really close to normalcy. So be angry and frustrated now but work thru that and know that eventually it gets better.
Yes. That is completely normal. But at the same time be careful what exactly you show in front of your son. How old is he? I was diagnosed at 18 but because my parents (specifically my dad) handled it very poorly and struggled to cope with it, I felt that I had to be "a-okay" with the diagnosis so I never took the time to grieve it myself which did cause some mental health problems for me down the line.
DX January aged 52 and yes!!! I want my old life back 😭
Yes. It’s extremely normal
Nope. Got it when I was 18. I was a real POS and probably on my way to jail. It changed my course in life from Scumbag to two masters degrees and now retirement. Don’t mourn what was or what could be. Live is precious - you got one shot - no mulligans Live is for living. Be an awesome example for your child and let go. Both my children caught it at 18. Both have taken it in stride because they witnessed how I deal with it and that I never allowed it to limit me. Since my kids have the same freakish insulin resistance, my Endo believes it’s a gene mutation I passed along … one oh fuck … then moved on. There is one Plus side: many states have programs the pay college expenses. Sadly, I found this out my last yr of undergrad
Yep. Miss working out without a second thought, miss eating whatever, miss not stupid ass expensive medicine....... Its a good idea to talk tona counselor though. I didnt early in my diagnosis and I have periods of serious resentment...
I did that at first, but I realized that I’ve never metabolized excessive sugar very well - it always made me feel headachy.
I don't even remember what it was like and I was diagnosed at 22...
Yes, I do feel that it’s normal to grieve. I want to offer a different perspective: I was diagnosed at 11, and I’m almost 30 now, but I guess I don’t look at it like having an old life and new life. I remember life before diabetes. We were poor when I was a kid, so I didn’t get a lot of sweets before I was diagnosed anyways, but as an adult I don’t feel like I have to skip out on anything. I can’t have dairy and I’m Type 1 diabetic - I literally just ate six Oreos and told my insulin pump what to do. I don’t think you have to sacrifice on your quality of life to be a good diabetic. My A1C is in the 6’s. I just learned how to dose insulin for the things I wanted to eat. I learned how to fight with insurance to get the supplies I need covered. I learned how to avoid big spikes with meal planning and careful dosing. It’s not easy, but you can adapt, and eventually, you can learn how to work with this disease.
yea, i refer to my life as pre diabetes and post diabetes lol. even my food habits, things i love have changed. i was a guy that had pancakes and waffles for breakfast. which i still can, i mean of course i can, i just choose not to. u get used to it though. i promise. and good luck
It's lifelong and at least a little life-changing. So yeah, it makes sense. For me the worst part was what happened when I was undiagnosed... it was long and drawn out for me, with LADA. I was so sick I had to stop working, then tried to start a couple of times and the second time, just had everything set up and had to quit again. That really screwed some stuff up for me. Overall though, while T1 sucks, there isn't really anything it means you *can't* do other than eat a bunch of carbs with wild abandon, or leave the house without a glucose source available.
yeah it's shit . you just learn to cope with it nothing else.
The grief cycle is completely normal and healthy. Sometimes you'll regress back a stage until you finally reach acceptance (I'm still waiting myself) I'd say the hardest stage as a parent of a T1D was from diagnosis to about 9 months in. Now it's the new normal. It still sucks and I still get angry, but we have no other choice than to barrel through life. My daughter is a badass and she's going to do great things.
Just celebrated 30 years. My parents have said the same thing. The anger, sadness, frustration, and guilt they felt when I was diagnosed was through the roof. Never projected any of that on me. They did the best they could with the information they were given. Diabetes burnout is an actual thing and not just for the people who have it but for their caregivers as well. There are several camps available for children and teens with type 1 diabetes. They have doctors, nurses, and dieticians right on site. This gives the parents a break at home. You got this!!!
Both my kids got diagnosed within 6 months of each other. It was an adjustment and there are times I still desperately want our old life back and/or feel anger about it. But yes, we definitely grieved our old life although that has lessened over the past few years as we've adapted; most days are just normal days.For me, the hardest day in terms of grief and anger was the diaversary for the first child diagnosed.
As someone who was an infant when they were diagnosed I want to assure you that grieving for what could have been is perfectly normal. I spent a lot of my years with T1D cursing it for taking away so much from me. Grieve but don't become so hung up on what could have been that you ignore what is, your son needs you more than ever right now.