{"id":13733,"date":"2011-01-24T08:59:21","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T13:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=13733"},"modified":"2016-01-05T05:21:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T10:21:47","slug":"surviving-the-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=13733","title":{"rendered":"Surviving the Diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, September 14, 2009, I noticed my 14-month-old son Nate had been thirsty all day.\u00a0 He cried a little bit more than usual and stood at the fridge, pointing until I got him a drink.\u00a0 I thought he was pretty darn smart.\u00a0 He was only a baby and yet he knew what he wanted and where to get it.<\/p>\n

That night he cried on and off during the night which was very unusual for him.\u00a0 He seemed thirsty again so my husband, Jim, gave him a sippy cup of water.\u00a0 Nate stopped crying, drank the water and went back to sleep.\u00a0 When he woke up again he was soaked-\u00a0diapers, jammies, and sheets.\u00a0 Everything was soaked and he was still thirsty.\u00a0 More water and more soaking, more water, more soaking . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Wednesday I was searching the internet for \u201cexcessive thirst in toddlers,\u201d and only one thing came up. Diabetes. But my mind would not allow me to go there. I put it in the back of my head and continued to monitor the situation.<\/p>\n

The next day Nate went to his once-a-week children\u2019s day out program. When I arrived to pick him up at 2:00 pm, I noticed that they had changed his clothes.\u00a0 When I asked why the teacher told me he seemed excessively thirsty and had soaked through his diaper.\u00a0 It hit me like a ton of bricks.\u00a0 Diabetes.\u00a0 Yet somehow, even though I knew<\/em>, I could not believe it. I called our pediatrician and made an appointment for that afternoon.\u00a0 I left my two older daughters with a babysitter, rushed Nate to the doctor, and insisted that they check him for diabetes.\u00a0 A nurse tested his blood glucose level, turned around, and walked out without a word.<\/p>\n

When the doctor came back in, I wanted to run away. \u00a0I understood the look in her eyes and I wanted to grab Nate and run away from the reality that was about to come.<\/p>\n

Nate was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on September 17, 2009, and admitted to the hospital right away.<\/p>\n

We spent the next four days in the hospital while the doctors stabilized Nate\u2019s blood sugar, and Jim and I learned how to care for our son. \u00a0Somehow we managed to convince the doctors and nurses that we knew what we were doing, and that \"Nate<\/a>we were ready to take Nate home.\u00a0 Looking back I now know we didn\u2019t have a clue what we were doing. \u00a0We were moving on automatic, what I call \u2018survival mode,\u2019 and we stayed that way for a quite a while.<\/p>\n

We plugged along as a family through our new normal, but the truth is that I was barely surviving. I pulled away from my friends and family. No one understood what I was going through and I had no interest in being around my friends, which made me feel even more lonely and isolated. \u00a0I skipped play dates, birthday parties and my monthly book club.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t ready to hear about other people\u2019s problems when my feelings of sadness, anger and frustration about Nate\u2019s diagnosis were overwhelming me.\u00a0 I cried a lot. I never knew when tears were going to hit me, but they hit me often.\u00a0 There were times I would find myself sobbing in the shower, in my car at a stop light, and even silently while doing a blood sugar check in the middle of the night. I never wanted Nate or my girls to see me cry so I did my best to hide my tears from them at all times.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It took a long time but my feelings of sadness and anger have subsided. Parenting a toddler with type 1 diabetes is always going to be challenging and frustrating.\u00a0 There is no easy way to wrangle a two-year-old boy away from his beloved train tracks, Matchbox cars, Handy Manny tool set, or catch him during a heated game of chase with his two sisters for blood sugar checks. \u00a0But we do it 8-10 times a day.\u00a0 Every day.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t gotten any easier to wake up at midnight and 3 am to check Nate’s blood sugar each and every night.\u00a0 We weigh and measure Nate’s food so we can accurately measure how much insulin he will get for each meal.\u00a0 And the biggest challenge, frustration and fear is knowing that there is such a fine line between the amount of insulin that keeps Nate alive, and the amount of insulin that could potentially kill him.\u00a0 Dealing with this requires a tremendous amount of support, and I’ve been lucky to find it. Thanks to my friends, my family and the wonderful Diabetes Online Community (DOC) I know that I am not alone in this journey.<\/p>\n

After going through many stages of grief I have come out the other side with a new outlook on Nate\u2019s diagnosis.\u00a0 I can say that although managing type 1 diabetes is not easy, we are living a happy and joyful life.\u00a0 We are no longer just surviving<\/p>\n

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A nurse tested Nate’s blood glucose level, turned around, and walked out without a word. 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