Our story is not as frightening as those you hear about with DKA issues. It begins shortly after Cham and her brother received the live virus Flu "shot" (they inhaled them) in September of 2010. We have been assured that the shot had nothing to do with the onset by our docs. So, they get the shot, and a few days later, Cham feels icky and then shakes it off in time for us to attend a friend's birthday party the following weekend. Cham overate (or so I thought at the time) and was very sick that night and throughout the following day. I'm talking laying on the couch, sleeping, looking pale, etc. I just figured she caught a bug and she had been leading up to this throughout the week. She felt better the next day, went to school, etc. This is the week that the symptoms showed up - drinking excessively, eating two dinners, peeing a lot. She kept telling me - I'm always thirsty at school and I use the restroom a lot. By that weekend, she had started to wet the bed in her sleep (not something she has done since she was 2). I then thought it might be a bladder infection - tried the cranberry juice route because she didn't complain of it hurting when she urinated. By about Wednesday, after changing the sheets on the bed every night, and watching her turn into this muscular, skinny dancer in her leotard, I was sure something else was the issue. I typed in all of her symptoms into Google and kept coming back to the same diagnosis...Type 1 Diabetes. We had her at the doctor by Friday and I was shut down immediately by the pediatrician. I reviewed all of her symptoms and I could tell she was irritated because I let Google do her job. She did a urine test on her, but she wasn't shedding any ketones at that time. She felt Cham was doing it for attention, but humored me with a fasting blood and urine test that we scheduled for Monday. All that weekend Cham drank, ate, and urinated excessively (still wetting her bed). I knew I was right - my gut was spot on.
My kid doesn't do stuff like this for attention, doc. Sure enough, by Tuesday afternoon, she called me asking me to bring her in immediately because her blood glucose was off the charts and she was now concerned with it being diabetes. From that moment on, I was in shock. I'm an elementary educator and by that point in my career had taught several T1 diabetics - I knew the ramifications. When Cham and I showed up at the pedi office, I had a ton of greeters - 2 nurses, 3 of the pediatricians - including Dr-she's-just-doing-it-for-attention, and lab technicians. As they swept Cham away to do more tests, the doctor pulled me aside and said - "You were right, you knew something was wrong, and it was wrong of me to put it off." After they tested her, she was shedding some ketones and her BG was insanely high. They told us to go to TCH to be admitted and expect to be there for about 3 - 4 days. MIND. BLOWN.
Three to four days? Why do we have to stay that long in a hospital? I call the hubs, and my parents to arrange for Cham's brother, Colton, to be picked up at school, and our adventure began. Cham says to me as we're driving home, "Am I going to die?" (the only time she's ever asked it) I told her about what I knew - shots and pricking fingers, and that HECK no - she wasn't going to die. She then said, "I'm hungry." So, I did what all diabetic mothers do when their child is faced with being an outsider because of diabetes - I took her to her favorite fast food restaurant and let her order whatever the heck she wanted. I mean after all, we were going to the hospital. I knew they'd fix her BG once we got there. Funniest part about that, the admitting nurse at TCH couldn't even get her BG to register on her meter. She said, "she's too high to be read on this meter." Tee hee....foiled again diabetes. Anyway, once we were admitted, I understood the reasoning behind staying for 3-4 days. This was a process and basically, we had to become experts on diabetes in order to treat her properly. Classes that taught us about what insulin does, what highs and lows look like, the importance of tracking BG. We were evaluated by psychiatrists that were making sure we were handling the diagnosis. I felt like I had earned some kind of medical degree once we left. Cham was a trooper throughout her stay - her fingers were sore from being pricked so much, but she had a great attitude while there. TCH is wonderful with kiddos while they're admitted and have plenty of activities available for them. It wasn't until we got home and unloaded all of the items we were sent home with (insulin pens, vials, syringes, a meter, test strips, alcohol swabs, books, packets, lancets) onto the kitchen table, that I cried. Our entire table that was clean on Tuesday, was overflowing in diabetic disarray by Friday. The poster above says it all. It hits you like a freight train - jump on or get hit is my motto.
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