At every meal, Candice Carlon counts the carbs in her daughter Mia’s food.
When Mia started pre-kindy, she stayed with her every day for six months.
Then, when Mia was invited to friends’ birthday parties, Candice would attend or offer to wait in the car outside, just for her own peace of mind.
Mia isn’t being mollycoddled and Candice doesn’t have an anxiety disorder, though if she did it would hardly be surprising.
Mia, now seven, has type 1 diabetes — a potentially destructive auto-immune condition in which insulin-producing cells in the pancreas simply give up.
Read more about Mia and Candice's journey in Katie Hampson's story in The West Australian recently. The story also features comments from Children's Diabetes Centre co-director, Professor Tim Jones. Read it here.
First published Tuesday 30 July 2019.