Happy Diaversary!!

Happy Diaversary to my Marvelous Middle!!! It is hard to believe that two years have gone by. Many times, it seems like it's been forever. All those late nights, all the blood tests, all the worrying, all of the high numbers, the low numbers…

In many ways, it has become second nature to us to live with diabetes. In many other ways, this is still something new, something foreign, something we don't fully understand. It is an old acquantaince, and a new fear. We get it, and yet.. there is still so much we don't get. I was thinking it had been longer since we were diagnosed. I was convinced that we were about to recognize 3 years. I think that is just sometimes how the mind works - things unpleasant seem to take longer, don't they? So, to those newly diagnosed, folks like us who have been dealing with this for 2 years are "old hats" at it all. But that's not really how it goes at all; you get better at the carb counting, and knowing what will trigger highs or lows, but you still live in a constant state of alert... you still get up every night to check blood sugars even though you have alarms and technology.

You will still be befuddled by unexplained highs, and terrified by lows. Yes, I now know that, for the most part, a piece of white bread has 19 grams of carbs, and M's favorite pizza is 38 grams per slice. I know that a Capri Sun at 2am will bring his sugars into a good range within about 30 minutes... I know that a snack with protein will help him stay stable throughout the night. But there is still much I don't know. I don't know why some days we are in a great range, and others seem to be all over the map...why some days he over-responds to insulin, and others make us wonder if the pump has failed.. We don't know the whole story. There are so many things going on in the background that cloud the picture; so much we can't see, we can't know...

But we do know this.. he is here, he is healthy, and contrary to some "medical experts" who don't know their ear from a hole in the ground.. he can eat cake! So we will... Happy Diaversary my amazing young man... many happy, and healthy, returns of the day..

 .. Until there is a cure...

2 years, and a lifetime ago...

This is a repost from just about 2 years ago, exactly.  Today, the 1st Sunday in October, 2009, our lives changed forever... As we get ready to recognize Middle's 2nd Diaversary, I wanted to revisit the time when our world started spinning out of control.

I've been quiet lately, not for lack of something to say, but for lack of time to get words down.

Middle and I spent 3 days at Scottsdale Healthcare hospital this week. He has been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Up until last week or so, he was asymptomatic, so we had no idea. Then, everything started to more or less fall apart for him.

It's funny, though, how you respond to what, looking back, are glaring changes in your child. Middle has always been our bright, cheerful boy who has a twinkle in his eye and won't sit still unless he is building something. For the last week or 10 days, the twinkle was gone. But we didn't really see it.

He had also been drinking water like a fish. This was more noticeable to Steve than it was to me, because Middle would hijack Steve's water in the middle of the night, after he'd gotten up to use the bathroom. I never keep water by my bedside, so I didn't notice that it was mysteriously gone by morning.

We had noticed that Middle was losing weight, but again, it didn't alarm us. He had gotten to be a little chunky last year, topping his brother on the scale by about 11 pounds. But then he started slimming down. His shoulders got broader. We thought he was growing and shifting in his shape from a little boy to a young man. Then he got on the scale. 9 pounds in 3 weeks. That scared me.

When he didn't want to go play in the park, that got our attention. Middle is always looking for an excuse to play in the park... always!! He wanted to go to Oldest's baseball game, but just sat with us, his head on either my shoulder or on Steve's. He was no longer talkative.

The thought crossed Steve's mind.. do we take him to the ER? "And tell them what... he's tired??" But clearly something was wrong. Emergency-room wrong?? No.. but maybe MinuteClinic wrong.

We went to CVS on Sunday after Oldest's baseball game. We didn't bring him home until Tuesday afternoon. His blood glucose level was 474. The nurse practitioner looked at me and said "I think you are going to go to the ER now.." and we went. He was a trooper with the IV, and the emergency room, and the poking of his finger 1000 times a day, and the shots and the knowledge that this is for life.

In fact, Middle has handled this whole transition better than I could have imagined. I expect he may have a fit sometime down the road, but for now, as we learn about carb counting and how to successfully draw insulin into a needle withOUT bending the poor needle.. Middle is almost looking at this as a science project. He enjoys seeing his glucose numbers, and figuring out how many units of insulin he gets depending on what he eats. "So, I have to make some changes, but this is so much better than some of the other things that could have been wrong with me."

Amen, my amazing child ... Amen!