World Diabetes Day

today has been a day to raise awareness about diabetes. the only awareness i contributed to was letting my son's doctor aware that i needed a refill on humalog.

today was a day like any other day. my son wakes up, we check his blood, i ask him what he wants for breakfast. he wants shredded wheats; i calculate the inslulin/carb ratio, give him a shot on his thigh, he eats, showers, takes forever to towel dry his beautiful curly hair, he asks me if the weather is going to be hot or cold, so he can decide if he can wear shorts or not. tx weather, you never know. his dad usually wakes him up at 6 and i woke him up at 6:18. he is worried that he will be late if he rides his bike to school, i will give him a ride. i've made his lunch, usually goldfish, granola bar, peanut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit, because that's about all he desires for a lunch. calculate the insulin/carb ratio of his prepared lunch and write it down for the school nurse, make sure everything is signed and all the mega amount of third grade homework is in his folder. then off we go at 7:30 to drop him off at school , which is a little over a mile from our house. wish him a great day. back home in a minute. phew... I'm so not a morning person.

i worry while he's at school that his blood sugar could be affecting his ability to learn or concentrate. i do take comfort in knowing that his school has a great nurse. after school i meet up with him while he tries to walk home. a lot of the times he wants to walk with his friends, and then there are those other times, when he gets low and the tabs in his back pack don't give him the instant energy to walk up the hill to our house. he's then glad to get in the car for the rest of the way home. he's usually starving after school. more carb counting more shots.

also, it's pretty awesome that he is on the student council. tonight he was in charge of selling soft drinks for a family movie night at his school. we watched kung fu panda. it was cute, just sad that they sold out of pickles before i got one. my son was also in charge of making signs after school, for the pickles, soda and popcorn they were selling. he said he was getting so hungry with all that pickle and popcorn talk.


dinner time has been on the table earlier than usual this year. my 9yr old son and my 13yr old daughter eat so much. they seem to want to eat every hour on the hour. i don't know where they put it. oh, and add their father to the equation and it's like i'm feeding a football team. seriously, i usually have to double a recipe for 4. my son will want more snacks all night long, which means more carb counting and shots. sometimes when he's not burned out on protein he won't need a shot.

my son sometimes tells me that me, his sister, the cat, and the dog are lucky not to have diabetes. of course it totally breaks my heart and i wish he didn't have diabetes and if only we could trade places. i then quickly snap out of it and start thinking that we will make the best of it.

before my son goes to bed we check his blood and give him a shot of lantus and a snack if he's on the low end.
it's almost midnight and i will check his blood now and at 2am. if his numbers aren't too low i will sleep fine. if he is lower than i'd like i will be up all night checking to make sure it will not mysteriously drop even lower while we sleep.

maybe he will be on a pump soon, but he's one of those people who'd rather not have anything attached to them.

oh, this...

We have moved to a new town. My son is on his third endocrinologist. First one was fine, second one I do not recommend, so third one will do. The third one we met with this Monday afternoon. He was pretty cool. He showed a lot of interest in us. He was impressed with the logs that we keep and thought we were doing a great job. He also thought I may be in the medical field because he said I was bright and really keep up with all that's going on. Really though, I have my son's life in my hands. How can I not know what's going on? My son's a1c has gone down from 8.9 to 8.1. I'm happy about that, since we work hard on avoiding those highs with all the math and science that it entails. 8.1 may seem high to a lot of people, I agree and I always hope for the 7s, but even the doctor said it's fine for a 9yr old. Sometimes I feel like I might get reprimanded for my son's high numbers, but luckily the doctor assures that we're doing a good job. Somehow I feel that Dr #2 would make me feel bad, then again that's why she's not our Dr. We are still not on the pump. The doctor said whenever we wanted all we have to do is sign the paperwork and we will get the wheels in motion for the pump.

my son is doing fine. of course we deal with highs and lows, but my son is taking it all in stride. the child is remarkable. i'm so lucky to have him and my daughter.

my daughter has an active social life and it often leaves my son feeling left out. so when he got the invite to go home with a friend after school, i had to say yes. even though they were going out of town 30 minutes away, and they were going out to eat. all of this was a first for all of us. the mother of his friend dealing with my diabetic child, my son checking his blood and giving himself a shot, without me or dad with him. all while he was far from home. he is 7 and he did such a good job with it.

i prepared a note that listed what his friend's mother needed to know. i outlined and highlighted the basic important info. she said she was going to keep the note in her glove box, so she will have it anytime my son is with them again.

basically i feel like i took a huge chance, mostly because they went out of town. you just never know. i just wanted my son not to feel like diabetes will prevent him from doing anything. especially not simple things like hanging out with friends. i think he has felt that way in the past.

last year when he was on nph, the regime was way too tough to get around. he wanted to stay the night with friends, but that would mean we would have to be with him at 8:30p.m. for his bedtime shot and his morning shot was scheduled for 7:00a.m., and who would check him in the middle of the night? he even played little league while on that 7:00a, 11:30a ,6:30p ,and 8:30p schedule, and he always had a game at 6:00p.m. which meant that we would have to get him from the dug out, do the whole blood checking routine and have him force something down, all before it was his turn to bat or get back on the field. everything we ever did that year seemed to fall around shot time.

i'm so glad lantus is much more flexible. i've heard a lot of positive things about the pump, i'm not sure when we will make the switch. i worry about choosing the wrong pump.

looking back

i think about the time my son had all the symptoms of diabetes, before we knew he had it.

when you have a child that you see everyday it's hard to notice the little changes; like how tall they're getting or how much weight they lost or put on. mothers experience this a lot, when the jeans they bought, not too long ago, are now floods. so, when your child is in the bath and you can see his ribs poking out of his body, it is very alarming. i mean, i couldn't understand why his big eyes looked so sunken in. he ate and drank so much , he had to be putting on weight. little did i know that his body was using stored fat cells to survive. It's scary seeing your child like that.

my child was fighting to be a regular kid and this disease was tearing him down, right before my eyes. he no longer was the carefree, happy, independent, funny little boy. he was struggling with the extreme thirst, hunger and discomfort. it kills me to think of all the pain he was going through, the symptoms that had him feeling so desperate, irritable and not his usual self.

i remember being at my daughter's softball game, and he said he was hungry. i bought him a hot dog and some chips. after he ate that, he said he was still hungry. i recall being kind of frustrated with him, i thought he wanted me to just buy him candy from the concession stand, and since i already bought him something to eat, i was ready to watch my daughter play. of course i didn't know that he couldn't help it.

that weekend we were at another softball game. when we were leaving he asked for a snow cone. i ordered a small and he threw a fit. he wanted like an extra large. That's like the size of a big gulp. i thought, no way could he drink that whole thing nor did i want him to... he was 5, a small was good enough, but he knew that he was always so thirsty and he could drink that huge snow cone and more, and in no time.

i think about times like that. when a regular day for everyone was a struggle for him and nobody knew it. that was the summer before kindergarten.

it was like a few days after school started (aug30,'04), and the nurse called and said he was throwing up. we took him to his pediatrician immediately. by then we had a hunch that maybe he too was type 1 diabetic, like his dad who had just been diagnosed. we told the doctor of all the symptoms; how my son could drink gallons of anything you let him. the doctor tried to convince me that my son did not have diabetes. he labeled my son as a psychogenic water drinker. he said," it is very common in children."

i'm no doctor but if see a child with weight loss, extreme thirst, hunger, vomiting and has a father with type 1 diabetes, i would think that after medical school it would register to check this out. we pleaded for blood tests to be done. i think he thought that we were hypochondriac parents. it's true we took him to the pediatricians even for what may seem like the mildest sniffles, but we had some significant symptoms here.

in 2002 right after my husband was diagnosed, we did have our son tested for type 1 diabetes, worried that it ran in the family. the doctor checked for glucose in the urine and he checked out just fine.

so on august 30,2004 after convincing the doctor that something was not right--we spent the day at the lab getting blood work done. hoping that maybe perhaps the doctor was right. the doctor told us we would hear back from him in a couple of days, with the test results. it was actually just hours later that he called us with the bad news.

our lives and most especially his life has changed forever.