This is supposed to be a response to this forum post, but I’m putting it here because it became kind of long!
Here are my scattered memories of it (as a 9-year-old):
I had been INSANELY thirsty for the past week or two, but didn’t really think anything was wrong. All I could think about was when I could get another drink of water or juice. I was at a friend’s house playing Barbies in her attic and her mom had given us cans of 7-Up to drink. I gulped mine down before my friend had taken ten sips and immediately went downstairs and asked if I could please have another one. My friend’s mom said no, and so I went back upstairs and spent the remainder of the play date thinking about how thirsty I was. I also remember sitting in school working on a problem in the math book which was a word problem involving jugs of milk, and all I could think about was how I wished I had a glass of milk to drink. I asked if I could go to the water fountain and was allowed, but ten minutes later asked again and my teacher said, “No, you just went, you can wait until lunch to get another drink.” I used to wake up several times each night to go to the bathroom and after washing my hands would stand on my tip-toes and cup my hands under the tap to fill them with water, and drink the water and fill them again and drink again, until my stomach was full of water and I went back to bed for another hour or two until I woke up to do it again. I tried to put a cup next to the sink to use for water but my parents kept taking it back to the kitchen, so most of the time I had to use my cupped hands.
I had a swimming lesson one day shortly before diagnosis and I wasn’t feeling that great. I was tired, my stomach didn’t feel good, and I accidentally swam into the barrier dividing the pool in half and whacked my head, which caused a headache. So I told the instructor I wasn’t feeling well and she (or he?) took me over to my mom and we went home. (I loved swimming and had never before asked to go home early.) On the way out to the car my mom asked me to walk in front of her and commented that I looked too skinny. (I didn’t know at the time, but apparently another parent had made a comment about how skinny I looked in my bathing suit.) At home I laid on the couch and had some juice and medicine and felt better, but my mom decided that between me drinking so much, not feeling well, and having lost weight, she made a doctor’s appointment for early the next week. I remember her saying, “It’s probably just a growth spurt or something, but we should get it checked out just in case.”
Early the next week I got picked up from school at noon and went to the doctor. I don’t remember her examining me, I just remember my mom telling her my symptoms, her saying it might be diabetes, and then leaving the room. I asked my mom what diabetes was, and she just said, “It would just mean you wouldn’t be able to eat much sugar from now on.” The doctor came back and got me to pee in a cup and sent me down to the lab to get blood drawn, and then we went home. I don’t remember the exact order of things, but I think on the way home I asked if I could have some water when I got home, and my mom said we could fill up a giant water bottle for me to carry around. I also said, “I think I know why I’ve been so thirsty, it’s because my mouth is so dry!” as if that was the answer to everything.
(Apparently, about an hour after I got the bloodwork, my mom got a phone call from the doctor saying that my blood sugar was so high I was at risk of going into a coma at any time and she needed to get me to the hospital immediately.) My mom said we had to go to the hospital, so we went to Emergency where I waited for a few hours and various doctors came to examine me and draw blood. At some point my dad showed up with a sketchbook and some pencil crayons so I could draw. I had no idea what was wrong with me but I wasn’t particularly upset because I’d been in Emergency before for asthma attacks and allergic reactions. When they admitted me my mom said I could call one of my friends before going upstairs, if I wanted to, so I did. I called a friend and said, “I went to the doctor this afternoon and now I have diabetes and am in the hospital!” and I’m pretty sure my friend was like, “Uh, okay?” and then I hung up. (Our parents must have connected later, though, because her and another friend came to visit me a few days later.) I got to ride upstairs in a wheelchair covered in a blanket which I thought was kind of cool, but when I got upstairs and into a bed I was dying of hunger and thirst. The nurses would not give me anything to eat or drink until they got the results of some blood tests, but by the time the results were in it was way past dinnertime. My parents begged them to let them run out and get McDonald’s to bring to me, which they allowed.
The next morning breakfast came and I was still starving so I began eating right away as soon as it arrived. About half an hour later a nurse came in and was like, “What are you doing?!” I was like, “I’m eating breakfast?” She had a syringe in her hand and told me that from now on I could never eat breakfast in the morning until I got a shot. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she gave me the injection and I continued to eat. I’m not sure if this was my first insulin injection (I can’t imagine them not giving me some the day before), but it’s the first one I remember.
I remember one traumatic blood draw where the nurse, for some reason, tried to use my finger (but with a needle, NOT a lancet) and then when that didn’t work, she tried to use my ear lobe. I’m not sure if the veins in my arms were just used up or what, but it hurt like heck and at one point my vision went black and my ears began ringing and I yelled, “MOM!” in a panicked voice, and she was like, “I’m here, I’m right here, it’s okay,” and somehow my vision cleared and I didn’t actually pass out.
There was a boy who had something wrong with his throat and couldn’t swallow in the same room as I was in, and also a baby who had something wrong with it and had to get tons of tests. Every night I would get a piece of cheese to eat, and a little boy who was probably about two from another room would always come around and point at it and go, “Waas dat?” and I would tell him it was cheese that I was eating. I remember being woken up every night by a nurse coming around to take my temperature and check some other things. She would always let me read the little red digital display that showed my temperature after she took it.
I don’t know how I came to understand what was wrong with me. I spent four days in the hospital but didn’t have any kind of diabetes education classes except for one video that I didn’t pay any attention to. At one point a nurse brought a blood glucose meter in and taught me and my parents how to use it. I also remember sticking syringes into oranges even though I never had to do a shot on myself. I remember having to announce every time I had to pee so that they could check ketones. One day I was eating lunch and didn’t want to eat some of it because it seemed disgusting to me, and my dad said, “You need to eat the whole thing, there’s a reason they gave you everything there.” To which I said, “No there isn’t!” and continued to pick at it. The parent of the boy who couldn’t eat said, “Well, you should eat it, you’re lucky you can eat at all.” I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t feel very lucky and resented that she’d said that.
When I left the hospital, I remember standing in the middle of the stairs in the lobby crying. I’m not sure why I was crying, but maybe it was the first time I understood that diabetes was coming home with me. A few days after I’d gotten home I was lying in bed and asked my mom if I was going to die, because it was called “die-abetes.” She said I wasn’t, that it was just a name.
And the rest, is history …
Wow. It seems weird to call this sort of thing a “great story”, but it is. Thanks for sharing, Jen 
It is a great story Jen. Thanks for sharing it. BTW I have never thought of how a child might perceive the “die-abetes” diagnosis. I wonder how many kids have been terrified by that?
aw the “die-abetes” part is really cute. I love little kid memories!!
Thanks for sharing your story
My discovery that I was a diabetic happen a bit odd for a Type 2 I think being it was found during a routine physical or normal blood work. I didn’t know my primary had been watching me for about a year before the diagnoses. He knew my medical history and wanted to catch it as soon as my blood sugar went high all the time. February 2006 needed insulin when I got admitted to the hospital for asthma expiation. I always had a CBC and CMP done after my admission and once I went to oral medication my blood sugar would return to normal range. My A1C was within normal range so he knew even with months of 60 mg of prednisone I was doing ok. That August I end up with another infection and again same pattern happened. This time my A1C was 11.5 so the day I was to be discharged my primary came in and said you are a diabetic and hopefully with diet and as soon as we can reduce your steroids you be fine. The CDE for the hospital came in and gave me a book about diabetes. I asked a question about Spelda. She said she would go look it up and come back later. I was discharged without any more training. My primary had told me he wanted me to test 4 times per day fasting, before lunch and dinner and I think at bed time. Record what I was eating and I want to say he gave me my 45 carbs per meal plan. This was a Friday afternoon around 5 pm. I called my insurance company being I knew they cover part of the diabetic supplies. Then called the medical equipment company they were closed that night. The insurance company told me go to the store buy what I needed for supplies and get my doctor to fax in the order on Monday and send in the receipts. My mom who is a nurse gave me a crash lesson that night she had my grandparents with her. I didn’t want my grandparents to know due to the fact my grandmother made issue about my weight since I was 5 years old. I am still over weight so I had some risk factor already. I went to the book store the next day got Diabetic for Dummies and another book. I saw my doctor the next week, he was happy with my numbers and the detail on my diet. I had also made appointment with the hospital CDE in which she told me I was doing it all wrong but didn’t tell me how to fix it.
At first my blood sugar mostly stayed below 150 and fasting under 100 and I started losing weight. I dropped over 50 pounds before my blood sugar started to climb again. I really couldn’t explain the weight lose but thought it was a nice thing. I never got off of the prednisone and the blood sugars started to climb again. At that point due to all of my many conditions my primary started me on Metformin which reacted to another medication. At the same time my primary said you need to endocrinologists. The Endocrinologist started me on insulin to cover blood sugars over 150 being I was still getting frequent shots of steroids and high doses of oral steroids and Janivica.
To this day, all I have ever had was a meeting the CDE who at first was over whelmed with me. Then pump training, I am more self taught than anything else.