@Freckles thanks so much, and sorry for the slow reply, September ran me over.
Sixty two years. I had to read that twice. You are the longest on this thread by a huge margin, and the way you tell it, the disease never got to be the main event. I reckon your parents had a lot to do with that. Deciding at age four to treat it like brushing your teeth was a bold move, in a time when most families would have wrapped a kid like you in cotton wool. The cookies story says it all: you were five, offering what you could not have, and nobody made a drama out of it.
Your sister’s hospital line made me laugh, because she was spot on and so were you. Thinking you are normal is not the problem, it is the whole trick.
You also proved my “no good age” theory wrong, or at least added a layer to it: maybe the age matters less than whether the people around you make it ordinary. At nineteen I had to do that part for myself, and it took years. You had it done for you by five. I wish every newly diagnosed kid got parents like yours.