Collaboration of Stakeholders for Positive Outcomes- Part 3
The State’s Role in the Care of T1D Persons Sir Frederick Grant Banting , a Canadian medical scientist, physician, painter, and Nobel laureate and discoverer of insulin said about the sale of the patent of insulin for $1, “Insulin belongs to the world, not to me.” Are we still respecting this honorable sentiment and gesture […]
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Collaboration of Stakeholders for Positive Outcomes – Part 2
I once again reiterate the story of Mitchell Jacobs and Britanny Gilleland, who has been living with type 1 diabetes for over 14 years. Even during their courtship Mitchell was able to see the frequent challenges Britanny had to undergo. He stood by her and undertook the responsibility of diabetes management along with her. Which […]
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Collaboration of Stakeholders for Positive Outcomes – Part 1
For a child who develops Type 1 diabetes at a very young age, the parents, healthcare professionals and the teaching fraternity become the primary stakeholders in ensuring the healthy growth of the child without any life-threatening episodes of hypoglycemia or the adverse impact of hyperglycemia (consistently high sugar blood levels for a long time). Essentially, […]
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Embracing Different Shades of Life
Everyone has a different journey in this plane of existence. So does Niky. In my life as a journalist who has had the opportunity to interact with countless persons over the past two decade and a half, Niky is one person I have seen at close quarters, who has undergone the most indescribable sufferings in […]
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Working Together is Success
I was overwhelmed to read the story of Mitchell Jacobs who fell in love with Brittany while riding a bike through the neighborhood. Mitchell Jacobs is enlisted in the Navy in the US and is married to Brittany Gilleland, who has been living with type 1 diabetes for over 14 years. Having been informed by […]
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The Lost Child | Sugar and Spice Blog series
When the news about their child having developed Type 1 Diabetes is first broken to parents, especially the fact that this condition needs life-long management necessitating multiple daily injections and finger pricks, the initial reaction is one of shock, giving way to distress and anger. Parents feel angry that their child would be subjected to […]
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Together We Can Overcome
Helping a loved one who has diabetes is very important because they need the support of their partner, family and the community constantly, to be able to keep themselves fit and contribute effectively to themselves and the community. In Indian families, where cultural ties run pretty deep, parents usually take a very active role in […]
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Sugar is not Sweet | Sugar and Spice Blog series
Families with a T1D child have to face several medical adversities for the T1D child, including common illnesses that children pick up from school, as well as other conditions due to their diabetes. We must clearly understand that any infection can cause the sugar to go up or down and it becomes very difficult to […]
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London Beckons | Sugar and Spice Blog series
Among the many books I have read in my lifetime, some books have left a lasting impression and continue to inspire me. Dr. V. Mohan’s book, Making Excellence a Habit is one such book that I have enjoyed reading and have been able to relate to it greatly. Probably because I can now understand better […]
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The Voyage to Excellence | Sugar and Spice Blog series
The book, ‘The Voyage to Excellence’, was released in January 2005. In the midst of Niky’s undergraduate studies she not only interviewed 21 top businesswomen across India along with another IIT student, but she completed writing the book and got it published too. The next step was to launch the book. This took a lot […]
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Sibling Revelry | Sugar and Spice Blog series
Chinky landed on earth like a bombshell, literally! She decided to make her appearance when the entire city of Chennai was in lock-down, in the aftermath of the brutal killing of our Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi in a bomb blast in Sri Perambathur not very far from Chennai! And that too soon after the double […]
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The Other Child | Sugar and Spice Blog series by Swati Amar
I am dedicating this blog to Chinky, Niky’s sister and to all other siblings of Type 1 Diabetics, because they have to traverse the challenging journey along with their family that is trying to cope with the demands of managing T1DM of one child. Simply put, T1DM condition impacts the entire family, all the time, […]
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A Writer’s Trail
Life had changed for the better for Niky and for us once she had joined the new school and moved to Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, for her diabetic management. Here she developed a rapport with the team and also joined a support group for juvenile diabetics. She not only derived strength from these week-end […]
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A Blessing from the President
Before my providential visit to interview Dr. Mohan at Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, we were visiting a voluntary hospital where Niky was under the care of one of the most senior diabetologists of Chennai city, who was heading the Diabetes department here. While the entire process of testing took about half a day at […]
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Penning Her Story
Deeply upset that her class boys were running away from her whenever she attempted to move around in class, Niky sought a creative way to give vent to her feelings and sense of injustice by writing a humorous piece called “The Mixed Bag’, which brought out the realities of the gender equation that existed in […]
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The rigors of living with disabilities
The fact that we are living in an unequal world becomes apparent when you have a family member with a disability or you are disabled yourself. Every living being is worthy of respect and resources on earth suited to their own existence, but this truth has not been recognized by most societies. In a country […]
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Settling for a Sugar Free Life
When a child is diagnosed with Type1 Diabetes, the first shock for the child and the family is not about making lasting lifestyle changes, but it is about the fact that the child has to be on insulin injections and finger pricks several times a day, all her life. That was the situation back then […]
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The Thirst for Life
I was recovering from brain surgery. We had shifted to a rented house and my husband went to stay there with our two little girls. He had landed a new job and he organized a full-time caretaker for the kids. I stayed at my mother’s place and within a month of my surgery moved to […]
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The Gifted World
I was operated upon for a brain tumour, known as acoustic neurofibroma in medical parlance, in April 1995. This was essentially a benign tumour on the 8th cranial nerve or auditory nerve, which had unfortunately grown so much that it was also resting on my facial nerves (sensory and motor) and would result in the […]
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An Illusory World
As a mother and one who had studied psychology, my intuition told me our firstborn was a very sensitive and gifted child who needed special care. Gifted individuals fall in the 2% population range of the IQ Bell curve and among various other exclusive cognitive functions and personality traits; they have high expectations of themselves […]
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The Eye of the Matter
Following the traumatic experience of the suicide attempt of our daughter’s care-taker and its aftermath, we decided to leave Kolkata, if only to help our child forget the incident. My husband found a job in Bengaluru and we decided to relocate soon. While in Kolkata, during one of our doctor visits to get our daughter […]
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A Bitter Pill to Swallow
My formative years in Kerala and later exposure to Kolkata, coupled with a Master’s degree in Psychology from Delhi University had transformed me to a socialist and a staunch believer in equal respect for all humans. Lakshmi, the care-taker of our daughter Niky was from Chennai and we treated her like a family member. She […]
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Sugar-coated Milestones
When we held our petite princess in our hands little did we realize this soft and tender bundle of joy would have to tread a thorn-ridden and rocky terrain when the vista of life unraveled before her. Our princess was a healthy and robust baby of 3.75 kg at birth and had a lot of […]
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As Sweet as Sugar Candy
“You have a healthy, bonny baby girl!” exclaimed Dr. Gupta, my obstetrician at Northern Railway Hospital, New Delhi, who had just delivered my baby after a C-section. I had been given a spinal anesthesia and so I could see my baby soon after she was out of my womb. The little neonate let out an […]
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Is Type 1 Diabetes a Disability?
I begin my series with the affirmation that every individual born into this world deserves to live a useful life and with dignity and respect, using all the intellectual and bodily resources they are naturally endowed with. Viewed with this perspective, your child should be given every opportunity by your family, community as well as […]
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Dr. Mohan’s – ‘A Home Away from Home’
‘Sugar and Spice – Blog series’ by Swati Amar For a long time I have been contemplating on doing a series of articles about families that are living with a Type 1 diabetic child, the travails of the child, how the families create a nourishing and supportive culture to nurture the child, how they have […]
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