You Need to Take Him to Emergency Now, It’s Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes..
The day our lives changed forever.
I knew something was seriously wrong with my 6-year-old son, but people kept dismissing it. He was already slim but got noticeably thinner in the last week of the Christmas break.
“Oh, its normal at that age, they are fussy eaters, he’s having a growth spurt” they said.
Arms rail thin, ribs jutting out, skin stretched so thin over his cheek bones it was almost translucent.
He completely lost his appetite but begged for ice-cream and watermelon, it was like he couldn’t get enough sugar. It was the end of the summer holidays and let’s be honest, we were all tired and dinner sometimes went uneaten. I tried to make him eat but he refused, so I filed it away for worry time. That’s the time after 10pm at night when I do my serious worrying.
He’s addicted to sugar! How on earth am I going to fix this? Turns out that was the least of my worries.
Out of the blue he started wetting the bed. He’d jump out of bed at first light, run into my room, cheeks pink with embarrassment -
“Mum my bum’s sweaty”!
Drop his wee soaked undies in a scrunched-up mess in the laundry and run off to hide behind his iPad. Then he got extremely thirsty and started drinking copious amounts of water. He would pinch my gym water bottles and hold onto them for dear life in his little hand, sipping vigorously like he was dying of thirst.
“Is it good that I’m drinking lots of water Mummy”? he said.
Well yes darling but why?
He was very agitated the day before school went back and on the first day, he came home complaining of feeling yuk and vomiting in his mouth. “It’s probably nerves about starting a new class, I was like that as a kid”, said my husband. His new teacher noticed he was off, which reinforced my suspicions something was not right.
The next day I booked a doctor’s appointment and when I picked him up from school it was clear he had taken a turn for the worse. His vibrant blue eyes were dull, and he was drowsy and breathless. At the doctors he started slurring his words like he was drunk…
What the hell is happening!?
Thankfully the GP was experienced and asked all the right questions but from the direction the conversation was going I knew something was seriously wrong. After a blood sugar test and my explanation of his deterioration she advised us to get to hospital immediately.
“You need to take him to Emergency now, it’s type 1 juvenile diabetes, I’ll call through to the ED and they will be waiting for you. Call your husband now and get him to meet you at the hospital.”
Not the words I was expecting to hear.
The following few hours were a blur of teary phone calls and a hug from a friend at her front door as she took in my daughter. Frozen in shock as we were ushered past kids and their parents waiting patiently in the emergency department to be seen. I remember feeling embarrassed that we were given priority over all these people waiting but then the realization this must be serious was slowly sinking in.
I have a vivid memory of the ED Nurses wearing scrubs with cartoon characters on them and that they were assertive and kind. They bustled around us all light and breezy, while talking our son through the process of fitting him with a drip of insulin and fluids in either arm.
“I hear it’s your birthday next week mate. Just a sharp scratch. Awesome! How old are you turning? Now a warm feeling. Where are you having it?”
They were experienced professionals at dealing with kids and they made me feel we were in safe hands. Doctors would enter the room, look at notes, then at a computer, talk numbers, try and explain to us what was going on, then leave. My husband and I were like deer in headlights, in shock, nodding our heads but not taking in much.
After a night in the ED, we went on to spend 4 days in the children’s hospital enrolled in a crash course in type 1 diabetes management. It was overwhelming but as the days went on it started sinking in that this is our life now. Days spent with Dieticians, Diabetes Educators, Social Workers, Nurses, Specialists and Registrars. Our son ate constantly; he was making up for all the recent weight loss.
Phone on silent, I didn’t have it in me to speak to anyone, but it beeped constantly with friends and family checking on us. I would cut and paste the updates and go back to watching my brave baby get his little fingers pricked and milked of blood every half an hour. Injections of insulin, blood tests, ketone tests, and food education lessons perched on the end of his hospital bed. Nodding my head but only really taking in half of what was being said, because I was in a constant state of anxiety.
We visited the Starlight Room to play computer games with sweet kids with haunted eyes who smiled and laughed despite being seriously ill.
Practicing injecting your child with insulin for the first time was daunting.
I was shaking so much on my first attempt, Christian screamed out in pain.
“This is your fault Mummy, you bought me here!” he said.
“Yes, she did mate, but that’s because you were very sick, and you needed to come to hospital and get medicine” said Anne our Diabetes Nurse Educator as she reassuringly smiled up at me and held him as he cried.
Our son’s diagnosis turned our world upside down.
Most people think they understand Type 1 and often mixed it up with Type 2, which is a completely different disease. It's a condition people know a little bit about and assume it's quite manageable but it’s very hard to understand the gravity of the disease unless you have lived it.
There is no rest, no day you can have a break from the constant monitoring of blood sugars and what they eat for every meal and snack. Then administering 4 injections a day, severe mood swings, lows (what diabetics call hypos — a bad hypo can render them unconscious) and then the highs that can take us back to hospital.
In the early days..
Messages back and forth with his teacher to check his blood sugar levels and to see if he is ok.
The constant worrying…
Reading that a Type 1 kid died in his sleep so lying next to him crippled with anxiety, listening to his breathing and freaking out if it sounded too shallow and I couldn't hear it.
Before this I knew absolutely nothing about diabetes, I’d never held a needle before let alone injected it or been to hospital for a serious illness.
It’s a roller coaster and there have been tears, tantrums and good and bad days.
Every parent of a Type 1 diabetic knows -
It changes everything but eventually it becomes part of everyday life.
On reflection it amazes me how we as humans adjust so quickly when we have no choice, our capacity to learn new things and how resilient and courageous kids can be. I hope this story helps to educate readers about type 1 diabetes in children and the signs to look out for. You can find out more here.
