Dreaming of diabetes...Emma's version

The other day something happened that kind of hit me hard. It knocked the breath out of me and I felt the tears stinging my eyes. Unfortunately, I am all to familiar with the feeling since diabetes came into our lives. I have to admit though, that I have gotten pretty good at catching my breath and furiously blinking those tears away now. Except for a few days ago...it caught me off guard.
I was going about my usual morning routine...checking Emma's BG, getting her breakfast, packing her snacks for school...bleary-eyed and full on bed head happening. As I bolused her for her food, she casually started talking about a dream she had during the night. As a side note, I think it's important to share that Emma is a total morning person...as soon as her big brown eyes open, she is up and out of bed and chattering away...seeming to make up for all those lost hours of not talking while she was asleep. I am the complete opposite. I open my eyes and have that argument with myself every morning..."you have to get up...get up...you're going to make her late for school...get up already...but it's so warm and cozy under the blankets...I'm just gonna close my eyes a little bit longer...why is no one shutting off that irritating alarm?....oh yea...cause I'm the Mom...I have to shut it off...get up..get up already!...she could be low, ya know....ok FINE I'm up..i'm up...i'm UP!" I don't like to chit chat in the morning until I have been up for a while...had a cup of coffee...and gotten my bearings about me. We are quite the odd couple puttering about the house at 7:15am every morning before school.
Anyway, she starts to tell me about this dream she had and I gave the obligatory "mmm-hmm" in all the right places...listening as best I could in my sleep-deprived morning stupor. Until I heard her mention that in her dream she was at school and her teacher was trying to make her change the basal rates on her pump. I instantly woke up...snapped back to reality and looked at her face as she was talking. Even though it was merely a dream, I could see the look of concern and panic on her face. She was getting flustered as she recalled the dream and was explaining to me how she felt small and ignored...and like no one was listening to her and she was yelling that she COULDN'T change the basals without telling her Mom first. She said that she was grasping her pump in both hands and kept turning away from the teacher...protecting the pump...keeping it away from the teacher. She was scared. Emma is not one to go against authority and usually will always do what an adult in a position of authority will tell her to do. She was torn...she wanted to protect her pump...protect herself...stop this teacher from messing things up and causing a dangerous situation for her. She was afraid. She was also worried that she would get in trouble if she didn't let the teacher do it.
As I blinked away the tears and made my face seem perfectly normal...hiding the fact that on the inside I was a mess....I saw how badly this affected her. I saw it...and it broke my heart. I don't know what was worse...the actual dream itself and the struggle that Emma described to me? Or the simple fact alone that she also dreams diabetes? I know that I have had countless dreams/nightmares about the big D since it entered our lives....but I didn't really think about the fact that she probably does too. I mean it is HER diabetes...her pump...her life....it's only natural that it would also be in her subconscious causing her to dream about it.
I think that makes me sad most of all....the fact that diabetes tries to shove itself into all of the nooks and crannies. I can handle it robbing me of sleep and pleasant dreams.....but it makes me really sad to know that it invades Emma's sleep and dreams too.