I really enjoy the first week of the new year. The glut of the holidays is packed away, and while there’s reflection on the past, there’s more focus on the upcoming year. I work in academics, so the semester has yet to start, and our small town is usually covered in about a foot of snow. It’s quant, so this seems like the perfect time to reflect and plan. However, I’m not someone who makes New Year’s resolutions. In general, I believe that if there’s something I want to change or start, any random Thursday is just as good as New Year’s.

a new year walk in the snow

Yet, type 1 diabetes has made me reconsider many assumptions and mores. The possible wisdom in establishing some resolutions at the start of the new year is just one of them. On her blog, Inspired by Isabella, T1D mom (and mother of triplets!) Kristina Dooley, wrote a post called “Losing Sight” that bravely discusses some of the biological stressors of being a T1D caretaker to a young child. Almost two years into the life of a d-mom and I can feel the effects of chronic sleep deprivation: foggy thinking, an increasing obsession with coffee, and higher stress levels.

Diabetes (both 1 and 2) is insidious for hundreds of reasons, but at the start of the new year, it seems that T1D is particularly cruel because there’s never a chance to regroup. Once that medical professional says “your child has type 1 diabetes” there’s no off-ramp. Instead, the person living with T1D, and to a smaller extent, his or her family, is running a marathon. For life.

We’ll look for the shady spots, like a three hour window with in-range steady blood sugars.

Maybe the start of 2016 is another good moment to rest. We don’t have much time before we’re back in the slog, so I think a few resolutions might help reframe our 2016 leg of T1D marathon: more protein, more sleep, and less worry about what’s beyond our control. On second thought, these are pretty lofty goals. I’ll settle for more sleep.