The summer of 2010 we took a trip to Vermont where we stayed at a family house on a lake. We had a great time being with family, swimming in the lake, playing in a mountain stream and site seeing. Mounds of french fries lovingly prepared by Uncle S after the evening swims. My girls, Roo (14 at the time) and Pink (10 at the time), had a great accomplishment when they swam across the lake. It was a carefree time.
And then it changed.
September brought, what I thought, was Pink having a growth spurt and thinning out. The weight loss seemed to accelerate and one day I noticed she was swimming in her pants. I started monitoring her weight and she lost 2 lbs in one week. I made an appointment with our pediatrician. The next day I heard her running for the bathroom in the morning before wake-up. Normally nothing would get her out of bed like that. Later that evening she exclaimed "I'm just so thirsty!" while getting another glass of water. It was that very moment I knew. I didn't dare say it out loud yet. The day after the doctor's appointment and blood draw our wonderful Dr. Ped called me at work. You know it's not good when the doc calls and not the nurse.
"Pink has diabetes. Her blood sugar is in the 600s. You will need to go get her from school and take her to the <children's hospital> right now."
We spent an intense 4 hours at the pediatric endo clinic where we were educated on what Type 1 Diabetes was and what it was doing to her body, how to count carbs, what insulin was and how to use it, how to check blood sugar, what those blood sugar numbers meant and how to give injections. And there in that small exam room I gave my baby her first injection of insulin. The first of what will be thousands of injections, pump site insertions and finger pricks. It was Thursday, October, 14, 2010.
At home Pink was so brave and stoic. Her attitude was it had to be done so lets do it. I was stoic but inside I was heartbroken. Having a child in your household diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes is utterly and completely life changing.
Three days later the family; Daddy, me, Roo and Pink, were sitting at the kitchen table about to do an all-family blood sugar check to show support for Pink. Roo did NOT want to do this. She has trouble with needles and blood. But she was very brave and did it. Looking at Roo's reading, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....
435
Now you hear about people experiencing "surreal" situations or "the world stopped". I have now experienced it. I'll go into more details in a Looking Back post later. That day was a Sunday and I called the on-call endo (which was not our Dr. Endo, but an on-call nurse practitioner). I told him the situation, he asked when Pink was diagnosed and when I said 3 days ago he exclaimed "ZOINKS!". That's all he said. There was nothing else to really say. I liked him right away.
So the next day, Monday, October 18, 2010, we all went back down to the pediatric endo clinic and Roo was also diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
Four days to two T1D diagnoses.
