Author: Dr Rachel Besser

Winner of the 2010 Minty Medico-Legal Society Prize: Best Healthcare Book for the General Reader!

A childhood diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes can be devastating for the whole family. Parents and children both worry for the future and how diabetes will affect their lives. For parents these concerns can be compounded by not fully understanding what your child is really going through.

Dr Rachel Besser, a paediatrician specialising in childhood diabetes, was herself diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was a child. Through her work with families affected by diabetes, she realised that many parents are desperate to understand how it feels to live with the condition, and wonder what they can do to make their child’s experience as positive and uncomplicated as possible.

Combining her own experience with interviews with children and adults who share their stories, Dr Besser provides an illuminating insight into what it feels like to grow up with diabetes.

Covers:

• The different phases of diagnosis and acceptance
• Hypos, blood tests and injections
• Food and eating
• School and the teenage years
• Family and friends
• Life beyond home

"We think this is a really great, informative book. It echoes so many of the thoughts from parents and children I have heard while working at JDRF. It is very hard for those of us without Type 1 diabetes to have any concept of what children, and adults with Type 1, and their families deal with every day, but this goes a long way to improving that understanding."
Sarah Johnson, Director of Policy and Communications, JDRF

"I find it quite fascinating reading with a great insight into the mysteries of being a child, a teenager and a young adult with diabetes."
Dr Ragnar Hanas, Consultant Paediatrician

"...fabulous - really informative and realistic but hopeful too."
Justin Webb, Today presenter, BBC Radio 4

"This unique book should be recommended reading for all parents of children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and the healthcare professionals who provide their care." Helen Thornton, Clinical Nurse Specialist in Paediatric and Adolescent Diabetes, Journal of Diabetes Nursing