How do I tell my son his pancreas is dying and that type 1 diabetes is coming for him too?

When type 1 diabetes (T1D) came for my then four-year-old son, we didn’t know any better. It caught us off guard — he had lost a pound, he was thirsty and waking to urinate. I had asked my pediatrician for a finger prick for peace of mind, and he confirmed my son’s blood sugar was perfectly in range. But the reality was T1D already lurked in his body, taking refuge in his pancreas, slowly destroying his inlet cells, causing him to lose the ability to break down sugar. His body had resorted to breaking down his fat to survive. That one isolated blood sugar reading masked the truth, providing false reassurance. Months later, when I held my limp son at the doctor, the blood glucose reading of 565 felt like a slap in the face. My darling baby’s pancreas was dying, making him tired and weak. And I had told him to push through and keep going, having written off his behavior to laziness. Although shocked, I didn’t cry in that moment, staying stoic for him. But I also hadn’t known exactly what it meant to live with T1D, or how fundamentally it would alter our lives, or how much insulin costs. But now that the same disease is coming for my oldest son, I know exactly what it means, and my heart is broken.