Juvenile diabetics generally have a difficult and complex dilemma. The younger the patient, the bigger and more exacting attention is required to control the disease.
Occurrences of ketosis and coma increase in frequency and become more erratic in children due to of their lower reserves of carbohydrates. And, because the relentless demands of growth, food reduction is not an acceptable treatment for children. Insulin becomes imperative.
Diabetic children sometimes show irregular subsiding of symptoms after the initial stages of therapy. This could last for several months. But the demand for insulin invariably returns and, with the uncommon exceptions where a shift to an oral medication is possible, remains permanent.
As the diabetic child grows and hits adolescence, emotional disturbances related to the disease are frequently expected to develop. Different matters are implied here—the tyranny of everyday insulin shots, the requirement to eat at rigid schedules, the restrictions against sweets and candies which their non-diabetic peers are free to enjoy, anxiety concerning too much physical activity (which may induce insulin shock) or too little (which could lead to diabetic coma).
These and other factors resulting from his "difference" from other youngsters—if they're accentuated—may contribute to the tensions and stress of the child who is diabetic. This, successively, may agitate the basic instability of the disease and add to its severity.
As treatment of the disease improves, and understanding grows, many juvenile diabetics carry on productive and active lives through adulthood, get married and raise families. Quantify this versus the days prior to insulin invention when the juvenile diabetic was bound to perish within two years after the attack of the disease.
