And Then There Was D

My daughter looks like any other preteen girl. Straddling that space between daddy’s-little-girl and “Can I borrow the car please”? Silly, sweet, and sassy one minute…mooning over boy-bands the next.

Look a little closer. You’ll see a gadget at her waist that, at first glance, resembles a pager from the eighties. You’ll see marks on her belly, arms, and back from multiple injections and pump site changes. You’ll see spots on her fingertips from the thousands of times she’s checked her blood sugar over the last two years. Watch her as she plans for every piece of food she puts in her mouth. Every meal and snack requires carb counts, google searches, and a kitchen scale. She never goes anywhere without her gear. A blood sugar meter, fast acting sugar to counteract hypoglycemia, extra pump sites, and the dreaded Glucagon. Glucagon is a life-saving injectable to be used only in extreme cases when a diabetic is so low they are seizing or unable to take fast acting sugar by mouth to reverse a severe low.

Look at her again and all you see is a sweet little girl. She takes it all in stride and doesn’t let it slow her down or stop her for one second.

Caitlin was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on October 5, 2012 at age 9. It’s hard for me to put my finger on when I think it all started. She’d been a little moody, tired, complaining of headaches and stomach pains here and there. By the end of September she didn’t want to go to dance class anymore and spent most of her free time laying on the couch. I remember the night before diagnosis vividly. I was following her up the stairs to bed and she looked like she was struggling to take every step. I was getting exasperated with her slowness and asked her what her problem was. She answered in such a pathetic voice that it broke my heart. “I don’t know.”

days before diagnosis

When her school nurse called me at work the next day I was not surprised. I was ready for the words when the pediatrician said them but it was still so very shocking, She said “You don’t need to go by ambulance but you need to go home and pack enough things for a few days and report to the emergency room. We’ll let them know you’re coming.”

We were whisked into the ER where she was poked and prodded for what seemed like forever. It was nothing short of miraculous to watch her begin to come back to life as the insulin infusion started working its magic. We later learned that she was in full blown DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis) upon admittance, a life threatening condition. Her blood sugar was almost 1,000 and we could have lost her had we waited even one more day.

in the PICU and still smiling

We spent the next three days getting a crash course in Diabetes 101. Taking her home was as scary as the trip home with our first newborn baby. Our lifelong journey as a Type 1 Diabetes family was just beginning.  And then there was D.......