Four years ago today we lost our 8 month old daughter Ava. She had been born with a congenital heart defect and eventually was listed for a heart transplant but wasn’t able to wait long enough for a heart to come. During this time, just after Ava was born and was still in intensive care our daughter Sarah was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. We were living away from home and staying at the Ronald MacDonald House in Toronto. It was a stressful time to say the least! It didn’t help it was also three days before Christmas.
But this is the crazy part… Ava’s care was demanding and with her hospitals and clinic visits had become a way of life for us. Ava was in hospital for most of her life and when she died it felt like the fight was over… we felt like soldiers coming home after a battle that had been lost. But there was still type 1 diabetes to fight! And I honestly believe that it helped me and my husband to still have something to put our energy into it. Type 1 actually helped us, isn’t that crazy?
And even though no one likes clinic visits, we had been so blessed with such a great team at SickKids in Toronto that I felt sad that we were cut off from them when Ava died. So I didn’t mind going to Sarah’s clinics, especially as she has the most amazing team as well! And as it turned out that the endocrinologist that was to be Ava’s (she had Turners disease) was also going to be Sarah’s. So this guy understands my tears and my concerns and even when I say that since I’ve already lost one child I really don’t want to do it again, he totally understands.
So even though today is hard, I just wanted to look back and thank God for being so faithful. And I’m glad that type 1 is something that we can fight and that I still have my Sarah. 