..."well, it seems that your daughter has the diabetes"...

These were the words said to me by the endocrinologist at the hospital the day after my daughter was diagnosed. as he leaned on the wall of the hospital room, head down, arms folded, looking as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

Geez - talk about crappy bedside manner!

The way this guy delivered this news to me (which of course I already KNEW since my daughter had by then received numerous insulin injections and had been poked and prodded countless times by every person who walked into the room) seemed like he was delivering a death sentence!

Yes, I knew it was serious, and yes, I knew that it was going to be tough, but seriously, I was half expecting him to tell me that I should get my 9 year old daughter's affairs in order!

Even worse was the fact that there was another little girl in my daughter's hospital room who was diagnosed several hours earlier than my daughter. As soon as this moron had finished with me he went to the other parents, leaned against the wall on their side of the room and, you guessed it, said,..."well, it seems that your daughter has the diabetes"...

and what's with "the diabetes" anyway? That's just weird???

I was beginning to freak out about dealing with this doctor for the foreseeable future with respect to my daughter's ongoing care but, thankfully, about half an hour later a lovely nurse came in to our room and asked if we would like to transfer to a hospital closer to home! Several hours later, after some very stressful blood tests and a terrifying ride across the city in a taxi (arranged and paid for by the hospital) where I was armed with a bag full of hypo treatments and 2 pages of emergency instructions just incase my daughter decided to go into a diabetic coma on the way, we arrived at the other hospital and into the waiting arms of the most wonderful paediatric diabetes team I could have hoped for.

You learn very quickly in this world of T1D that not all doctors or diabetic nurses and educators are the same and that YOU are in charge of the care of your child, not the endo or the nurse or anyone else.

I wonder if Dr HappyPants is still scaring the crap out of parents of newly diagnosed kids on the other side of the city???