The photograph

We have had many comments on the above photograph of our little warrior - and I wanted to explain why we decided to use it as the header image for the site and our facebook page. Every month, since the first month after his birth, we have taken a photograph of Harrison next to this great big bear. We were a little late taking his 11 month photograph as we normally need to set aside a few minutes over a weekend to capture it. Instead of the 28th of September we ended up taking this picture on the 2nd of October... just three days before Harrison was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

There's the saying that a picture says a thousand words, but among them, in this instance, Diabetes was not one of them. Harrison has shown us time and again that he is fearless and courageous and can conquer anything. Maybe we gave his strength of will a little too much credit because in this small moment of laughter and smiles, we had no idea that antibodies were busy doing a number on our little boy's pancreas. In fact, we had the conversation again today about the day he was diagnosed and the words that came out of Dr Bisseru's mouth as she gave us the news.

She told us, using her hands to show us our happy boy playing quietly on the bed in front of us, that "this is not the picture of a sick baby - this is not the picture of how sick your baby is right now - I need you to understand that your little boy is very sick". We were taken aback. She proceeded to take us through the numbers and initial test results and explained just how close we were to absolute worst case scenario. Our baby's life was saved by the beautiful Dr Bisseru to whom we will forever be grateful!

Because of her we see these smiles everyday! Because of Dr Bisseru, we were introduced to our Endocronologist Dr Kubendran Pillay, who has cared for and taught us how to care for and raise our little man with Diabetes.

This photograph says so many things for us, especially now. It gives us hope that our little boy can handle this and anything else thrown his way. Going back to the saying that a picture says a thousand words - I feel like, in one moment it definitely can, and then in another, it can say so much more. It all depends on your frame of reference. On this day I guess I thought it was just a beautiful photograph of my beautiful boy, but today there is a whole story behind this photograph: when we were first introduced to our Type 1 Warrior.