Very rarely does Sydney like people knowing she is Type 1 Diabetic (T1D). She quietly takes care of the disease. Quietly doing finger pokes, counting carbs and riding the sugar highs and lows of this crazy disease without most noticing she's even doing it. As a precaution, she wears a bracelet identifying she has this nasty disease, in case she ever goes low and passes out. Other than wearing the bracelet, you'd never know she is T1D.
As her parent, I can't imagine the amount of stress and weight she carries knowing this disease will never go away. I wish I could take it away from her. Unfortunately she has worry about this nasty disease 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the rest of her life. I wish she could just be a kid and not worry about it.
Today Sydney and I went to the first RSL home game in Sandy, UT. RSL was playing the Seattle Sounders. The Seattle Sounders recently acquired a new player, Jordan Morris. Jordan Morris is a name we've known for a while in our home. Jordan Morris played soccer for Stanford University, as well as played on the US Men's International team as a college student. The US Men's International team is made up of the best of the best players from all of the Major League Soccer teams in the United States, and then there is this Jordan Morris, a 20 year old college student that is added to the team. Pretty impressive. Jordan Morris is also a Type 1 Diabetic. It's great to see athletes that are able to perform at the highest professional level, despite being Type 1 Diabetic. While Sydney hasn't personally told me this, watching and knowing someone like Jordan Morris also has T1D, has given her hope.
Jordan was diagnosed with T1D at age 9, the day after Christmas. He's 21 now. Jordan recently got a tattoo stating he was Type 1 Diabetic, kinda like Sydney's bracelet, but a little more permanent.
Back to the RSL game today. Sydney was excited to see Jordan Morris play. Even though he was on the opposite team, I think she was quietly cheering for him. Luckily RSL won, but it was fun to watch a someone with the same disease as my daughter play professional soccer.
As soon as the RSL game was done, Sydney and I quickly left the stadium and headed to her Futsal game. We had about 40 minutes until she played and without traffic it would take us about 35 minutes to get there. We weren't sure we'd make it, but ran to our car in an attempt to make it before kick off. As luck would have it, we were able to make it to the game a few minutes before it started and Sydney was able to make the first goal and help her team win.
