A Sense of Hope
Latha Dawn and Service Dog Rita
She felt the weight every day.
The backpack, digging into her shoulders, filled to the brim with her glucose monitor, insulin, emergency pumps, apple juice. Everything Latha Dawn needed to survive.
It was the burden she’d carried ever since she could remember. A bit of sweetness for the moments when her sugar dropped too fast, hands cold and clammy. Insulin for the spikes.
Her bag was always packed with supplies, but the heaviest weight wouldn’t quite fit.
She couldn’t zip up the feeling of being different from the age of three. The constant awareness, mea-
suring how much she could eat, how hard she could laugh, controlling every emotion and risk that might send her into danger.
“Diabetes doesn’t allow days off. Diabetes is every day, every minute of the day,” Latha Dawn says. “Any emotion I have controls my blood sugar.”
And at night, when everything else settled, the weight pressed in the most. The fear of missing an alert from her monitor . . . and never waking up.
Now, before the alert can pierce the air, she feels the gentle pressure of a paw already there—Rita knows.
She senses the change in Latha Dawn, sometimes 30 minutes before technology even registers the subtle shift.
“Rita lets me know, and she doesn’t stop until I wake up,” she says. “And that takes my fear away.”
Through life’s highs and lows, Rita is by her side. And though the backpack is still there, the weight no longer rests on Latha Dawn alone.
With Rita the burden softens, and Latha Dawn feels lighter as the heaviness begins to lift.
