Camping, Teleporters and Wishes

In our small home town we have a large, fun group of families that go camping together every summer.  We first joined this group in August of 2008.  We ended up skipping the camping trip the summer of 2010 after Ben was diagnosed because the thought of bringing insulin and syringes with us into the woods of New Hampshire was more then I could bear.  To be honest, I could hardly handle the inconvenience, lack of sleep and dirt of camping before diabetes!  But we have now survived two wildly fun summer camping trips since Ben’s diagnosis.  And for me, this may just be one of our biggest accomplishments as a T1 family.

Last weekend was the annual summer camping trip.  And again we all came home happy, exhausted and filthy dirty.  We had one diabetic scare when Ben was super-duper low after swimming (it was a 3 juice box recovery).  But for the most part we survived the weekend without too much diabetic drama.  Though, I did come home with one short story to share.

The campground we visit is on the shore of a beautiful lake.  So we end up spending a lot of time swimming, kayaking and my preferred activity (which in reality is no activity at all), floating on tubes on the lake.  One family brought a very large two person raft that Ben and his two buddies, J and A, used to float around on.  They would dive off the side and then climb back up.  Here is a photo of them playing on the raft.

They played this game for over an hour before they decided they wanted to return back to shore.  By this time they were all pretty tired and none of them wanted to paddle back.  Jeff and I were floating on tubes nearby, so little A asks Jeff, “I will pay you a dollar if you pull us back to shore.”  Jeff figures he can’t pass up such a generous offer so he slowly starts to pull them back to shore.

As Jeff is paddling little A says, “I wish I had a teleporter then we could just teleport back to shore.”  The boys all laugh.

Then J adds, “If I had a teleporter I would teleport to a big comfy sofa with an Xbox so we could all play Minecraft.”  We all laugh and agree that’s a good one.

Then Ben chimes in, “If I had a teleporter I would teleport right to a candy store.”

Jeff asks, “Really, a candy store?”

Ben adds, “Yep!  And at this candy store I would have $20 and there would be no such thing as diabetes!”  We all laugh.

Then A says, “Yea!  I’ll go there too!”

It has been almost three years since Ben’s diagnosis and this was the first time Ben has ever wished he didn’t have diabetes.  He has been so strong, certainly stronger then both Jeff and I.  My heart ached a little bit.  I pray everyday that a cure is found in Ben’s lifetime.  But maybe as a backup I should also pray for a teleporter!  Then we could all just teleport to the magic candy store where there is no such thing as diabetes.  Hopefully it’s a big store because every T1 family is invited!