Mom, how long does it take for diabetes to go away?

That Saturday was definitely one of the hardest days of my life. I was trying to process, while pregnant and sleep deprived, that my child had a lifelong illness. He just lost ten years off of his life expectency. He was at risk for heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, and amputation and would need constant monitoring for the effects of high and low blood sugar. Still, I think the most heartbreaking moment of the day was when Andrew crawled up in my lap and asked how long it would take for diabetes to go away! He'd been such a good sport about everything, that I never thought about the fact that everything he'd ever had before got better. It was so hard to hold my sweet seven-year-old needlephobic son and tell him that diabetes never goes away and that he would have to take these shots and finger pricks for the rest of his life.