Childhood Diabetes Today

In the picture above, you can see Dan on the first day of school, standing next to his dad, posing for a picture with his trusty diabetes kit hanging from his shoulder. He goes everywhere with it.

Some of you know how this works, many of you don’t.

Back in April this year, Dan was home from school because of Covid19 precautions at the schools. Every night, he got up to use the bathroom six or seven times. He was tired and drinking a lot of water. I wasn’t sure what was going on. He was acting strangely, but he was also missing school and friends. After a couple of weeks, we made an appointment with his pediatrician to see what might be going on. We’re always there. He’s got ADHD and autism. We are familiar with the doctors visits, and I felt a little overly cautious, but I didn’t care. Something was up and if it was nothing, no harm no foul.

Within 10 minutes of arriving, it was clear that we made the right choice to come in. The doctor told me he was sure he had Type 1 Diabetes and they sent us to the Primary Children’s Hospital for immediate care. Because of covid19, we weren’t sure how things would work, but the hospital allowed both parents to come in with him because the biggest part of the initial hospitalization is education and learning to live with diabetes.

We learned a lot during our 3 day stay at the hospital. Dan went from hating needles and screaming during a finger prick to giving himself shots. He has to have insulin every time he eats and every time his blood sugar is high. It’s a lot of needles and poking.

After we left the hospital, we all felt excited and ready. Then the honeymoon phase came. They told us this would be a period where the pancreas would give one last good effort to work. His numbers were pretty good and we got a little lazy about tracking everything carefully.

The honeymoon period is over now and the reality that this is a lifelong disease is settling in for all of us. Dan is sick and tired of it. We are really happy with the new G6 glucometer that he wears. The glucometer lives attached to his body and lets us know if he’s too high or low without a finger prick. The receiver beeps whenever we should be concerned.

So that’s the PREFACE to today… Sorry it took so long. I prefer to right about the present, but sometimes a good preface is necessary.

We’re back at school. We’ve had some troubles keeping the blood sugar steady. Yesterday Dan was having a terrible no good day. In an effort to parent his blues away, we let him have Panda Express Honey Walnut Shrimp for dinner. But he didn’t dose enough for his food. Then he snuck a donut. And some chow mein noodles. It ended up being an uphill battle. All night long, his little glucometer receiver beeped. He would get a shot of insulin, and we would wait an hour to see if his blood sugar was coming down… but it remained above 300 most of the night, despite me giving him doses of 4 units of insulin at 9:30pm, 11:30pm, and 1:30am. I just stayed up watching Buffy, checking his glucometer every hour, hoping that the numbers would start to come down. I would grab his insulin pen from the fridge, attach a needle to the top of the pen, wake him up, and shoot his little thigh with 4 units of insulin, hoping this time it would start bringing his sugars down. I was afraid to give him more because it might cause him to go too low. Finally at about 4am, it was down to 286. The goal is to keep it between 100-200 so 286 wasn’t great, but it was progress.

Because of the eventful night, I messaged his teacher and told her that we would keep him home. His dad made him a carbfree breakfast of eggs and ham. I made him a low carb lunch of white chicken chili with cheese and avocado. And we watched him like a hawk. His numbers finally landed at 150 after his breakfast and a long nap.

At about 11 am, his balance was a little off, he was cracking jokes, but he complained that his legs hurt.

If he had been at school, it’s likely he would have had a tantrum from the stress. You combine ADHD, autism, and diabetes, and you get some fun behavioral issues, but for the most part, he is a wonderful kid. And super smart.

I don’t know how interesting this post will be to anyone reading it.

I guess I’m just sharing a little bit about the worries I have for this small boy. Yesterday he said, “I wish I didn’t have Diabetes! I hate it! It ruins everything! It makes everything harder!”

I responded, “You’re right. Your life will be harder. I could just spoil you and tell you that we’ll take away all the hard things, but I want you to be able to do anything you want. Diabetes won’t stop you from doing great things, but it will be harder for you. You can decide if you want an easy life with no rewards, or a hard life with big rewards. It is up to you.”

We had this conversation in the car on the way home. While driving, he told me he was feeling sad about some other things too. We talked about things I won’t share because I want to respect his 11 year old confidences, but it was enough to make me talk his dad into taking us both out for Panda Express.

And then our night time blood sugar vigil began.

You can’t win for trying. Hopefully we’ll get better at taking care of him so the nights won’t be so long and scary. We have the rest of his life to get better at it. Of course it’s a horrible irony that the girl who can’t stand dieting or keeping track of nutrition now has a son whose life depends on keeping track of nutrition.