Hi, this is the story of our life with diabetes. It's been a long 6 years. It does feel like longer. I am not diabetic, but my only daughter is. This is a place for me to write it all out.
I don't remember growing up with any one diabetic. No one in my family was diabetic and the only person I had a vague knowledge of was a colleague's son. He went blind by age 30 because of his diabetes.
The summer of 2001, I was warning Sara about the heat...and urging her to drink lots of water. She signed up for a emergency medical science camp and was busy most of the day, but I noticed she was up at night running to the bathroom. We went to a movie and I noticed she drank a huge soda and ran twice to the bathroom. We would swim in the afternoons, and I noticed her legs were thinning. She said she had lost 5 pounds. I thought maybe she's going through a growth spurt. But the kicker was that one afternoon, she refused to come with me shopping. She loved to do that! My father said he would watch her while I went with my mother. Mom and I were gone 1 hour. When we came back, I dropped mom off first and went home to get groceries in the fridge. Then dad called. He said that Sara was still sleeping and that perhaps I would want to get her tested for diabetes. He said it. He said the word, and I knew.
Getting Help
I immediately called her PCP. If I could wait until the end of July....that's what appointment I would have been given. 4 weeks later? Incredible! I called the 1-800 dial a nurse. She told me to take her emergency. We arrived by 5:00 PM with a blood sugar # of 540. We didn't even see any one until nearly 10:30 PM. The attending ER person was a real b*st*rd! He said, " Sara, you are diabetic and will have to take insulin the rest of your life. We're going to start a drip and then give you insulin to get your blood sugar numbers back down." Then he looked at me and said, "You, you can't get upset. If you get upset, she'll get upset. The better you take it, the better she will." I had flashes of her going blind and all her life options drastically altered.
We began our D-journey. And me? I was going to be brave. But really, it's her.