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A Brave Little Girl
I am so proud of my granddaughter
A little backstory. Lottie (Charlotte) is my youngest granddaughter, my daughters’ daughter. Now, in the interests of transparency I will say here that Jen is legally my stepdaughter. Her mum (SWMBO) and I have been together since she was 18 months old — she will be 40 next year — and her natural father (my wifes’ first husband) showed little or no interest in her. Therefore, the poor kid has been raised by me. As a dad, I was no more conventional in my approach than I was with anything else! As a reward, Jen legally changed her surname to mine on her 18th birthday, using the money she’d been saving up from her weekend job. She also once told my father that “Stuart may be my father, but Tony’s my Dad!”
Lottie was Jens’ second child with her ex-partner, and at the age of four, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, insulin dependent. This means that she can go nowhere without insulin, glucose tablets, blood-testing kit and so on. Everything she eats has to be weighed and tested for carbohydrate content, and the proper correction dose measured. She can’t just casually accept a sweetie, biscuit, ice-cream cone or any other edible treat the way other grandkids can. For a lot of her life, she has had to have multiple daily injections and finger-prick blood tests. Nowadays, she has a sensor on her upper arm that monitors her levels…
