VERY SORRY TO HEAR THIS,IT SADDEN ME EVERYTIME I HEAR OF ANOTHER PERSON DIED OF DIABETES.WILL KEEP HER FAMILY IN MY PRAYERS
this is beyond sad for any child to pass I will keep the family in prayers. as i pray that we can find a cure at least for the young with diabetes.
The loss of Eilish so suddenly, and at such a young age is almost unimaginable. Unfortunately, I can imagine it and this is the grim reality of what can happen when your child must depend on insulin to survive. I feel insulin is a very dangerous drug, capricious in its action, the doses in children, and particularly young teens changing every few days, one of the drugs listed in hospitals across the U.S. as one of the easiest to accidentally overdose, requiring two R.N.s to supervise administration, one to draw up the drug, and one to check the dosage. The huge changes in basals required of children in puberty and young teens, particularly in the evening and overnight hours, changes two and even three times the normal hourly basal amount, dropping at some unknown hour of the very same evening back to the “normal” basal is a recipe for disaster. What happens when the parent’s body, exhausted from weeks of staying up and monitoring blood sugar through the night, gives out and you sleep through the three alarms set? How often have we all done this, woke up to a low blood sugar in the 40s, yet somehow our child was magically okay, requiring only a juice box? There but for the grace of God go I. I have read of five teens in total who did not wake up in the past six months. How many more deaths are there that are not counted? The CDC does not keep track of cases of Type 1 Diabetes. I have no faith that the deaths of Type 1 PWDs are ever recorded. I hope Mel and Stan find the courage to survive this; they have lost everything to Type 1 Diabetes, a disease we are all told we can survive if we “manage” it carefully enough. We need a cure. Beyond that, we need a safer drug to keep our children alive before a cure is found. We certainly need the option of having siren-like alarms on the two cgms on the market whose alarms I can easily sleep through. We need honesty about the dangers of low blood sugar and some solutions. We need to be proactive, before getting behind the wheel of a car, keeping fast acting sugar nearby always. I, for one, am raising the bed time target again. I had become much too complacent.
My deepest sympathies to her family, we are so sorry for your loss. We will pray for you and your family.
I believe that physicians also need to be open minded and realize the need of the child. Some doctors are still stuck in the 1980’s and are not up to date with technology and are not willing to try. They rather do it the old fashion way
and our kids suffer the back lash of it all. Our children are the most precious thing we have and to loose one is an incredible pain. My daughter is 13 years old too and a type 1 and I’m always afraid for her. Because things can go down hill very quickly. She uses insulin 4 times a day and tests 6 times a day. It’s hard. Faith that a cure is found so that no more children are lost to this battle.
My heart breaks for her family. I am praying for them as they mourn.
This scenario is heartbreaking, but important to remember today, on WDD. We must fight for a cure so that this never happens again.
I know that parents of kids and teens with T1 sleep with one eye open each night. That’s how my own parents were, and they both still wake up at 3am each night, even though I haven’t lived with them for years! It’s just habit.
I hope all the parents out there know that this type of thing is uncommon. I was diagnosed at age 6, and am now 31. I survived adolescence, and most kids with T1 do. That’s important to remember, even as we mourn for Eilish and extend our condolensces to her family.
At 13 a young girl should be worrying about zits and boys, not waking up the next morning. So sad.