My Diabetic Son Called Me Sobbing. My Wife Said: “I Took His Insulin Pump Because He Skipped Chores…”
My son, who has type 1 diabetes, called me from home, sobbing so hard I could barely make out the words.
“Daddy, please come home. I can’t find my pump. Mom took it. She won’t give it back. My sugar keeps going up. The alarm won’t stop.”
His voice was thin and ragged, like it had been scraped over gravel. I was standing in a glass-walled conference room on the twelfth floor of an office building, a laptop still open in front of me, charts and projections frozen on the screen from the client presentation I’d just finished. My phone had been on silent for the last two hours.
Seven missed calls from Tyler. Two from my wife, Angela. One text from him that just said, “Dad please.”
I had called him back without even thinking, the way you’d instinctively reach out if you saw your kid falling down a staircase. And now I was listening to his breathing stutter through the phone while my own heart tried to claw its way out of my chest.
“Buddy, take a breath for me,” I said, one hand already scooping my keys off the conference table, the other fumbling for my bag. “Tell me where you’re sitting right now.”
“On the couch,” he choked out. “I feel weird. My legs are shaky. My stomach hurts.”
“Is your CGM on?” I asked. “What does it say?”
There was a rustle, a muffled beep through the phone. “It says three-ten. It keeps going up. I tried to find my pump, but Mom put it somewhere. She said… she said I have to wait until after dinner.”
I stopped walking. The hallway spun slightly, fluorescent lights blurring into white streaks.
“Put Mom on the phone,” I said.
A few seconds of movement. Then Angela’s voice came on, calm as if we were discussing a grocery list and not our son’s pancreas failing him in real time.
“He’s fine,” she said. “He’s being dramatic. He didn’t put his backpack away or line up his shoes after school. We’ve talked about this. I told him he can have the pump back once he eats dinner and cleans up properly.”
“It’s four o’clock,” I said. “You don’t serve dinner until six.”
“So?” she replied. “The school nurse has backup insulin. You’re always acting like he’ll die if his blood sugar isn’t perfect for two seconds. It’s called discipline, Mark. I’m not going to let him skate through life because you’re scared of making him uncomfortable.”
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