Quick bio

Hi, this is my story.

In 2004, pregnant with my second child, I brought my son who was 3 then, to see his pediatrician. He just changed from an at-home daycare to a big daycare facility, was dragging a cold for about 3-4 weeks. After a quick check-up, as she started to prescribe an antibiotic for the throat I asked so innocently “so is that why he keeps on drinking and going to the bathroom a lot”, she immediately (thank god!) thought about diabetes and checked his urine sugars levels and they were high.

And she bluntly said “you need to go to the hospital right now, he is going to need insulin shots everyday for the rest of his life” WHAT? I was chocked. Having no type 1 diabetes in the family, I understood what insulin shots were for but did not know that our lives would never be the same.

Walking out of her office, I started to cry walking towards the pay phone to call my husband. My son thought he did something wrong, so I never really did the real ugly cry thing, did not want him to feel he had something to do with the fact that I was crying.

We stayed 5 days at the hospital, not because of his poor state, the opposite, it was the first time they had such an early case of type 1 diabetes at the hospital that they did not want to put him on insulin right away to be sure. He was closely monitored for 2 days, when they started to see some keytones showing in his urine (at first it was traces amounts right after a meal but fine after) and they said that the tests were back stating that it was type 1. So he started on insulin on the third day.

It was ridiculously small amounts of insulin at first (just the slow acting insulin) and was doing lots of lows. Scary.

We had training each day at the hospital and once a week for a month after that.

The 3-month visits to the hospital for the first 2 years were not healthy ones for my sake. The doctor made me feel that there was always something wrong with how we managed the disease, I guessed that he felt that if he encouraged us we would relax in our vigilance and instead made me feel like my son’s A1Cs were a score card and I was failing a lot.

It took 2 years of feeling bad, for me to decide to change doctors (at the same hospital). I know, it took too long. At first they did not want me to change doctors.

My son was on NPH for the slow acting one and we were having nightmares about how bad the control was with it and the doctor did not want to put him on Lantus.

When I changed doctor, a weight was lifted off of my shoulders. She is very nice and understanding, and even after 2 years of being that nice to me, I still have some guilt issues when I know that the results will not be the greatest. After being on Levemir (just to try, was doing a peek similar to NPH) and than Lantus for just a few months, we opted for the pump (that was in 2007).

It has been a year and it’s great. Already, he does not remember how it was with the injections (5 daily). He loves it.

We did not know how much counting it would require, carbs, basal, ratios, but it’s all worth it, we are so happy with it.