Where to begin (And how to handle change)
I can rant and/or educate anyone on Type 1 Diabetes, at any given moment in time. In fact, nights like last night, when I should have been sleeping, I was instead awake writing blog rants in my head... which is what ultimately made me create a Tumblr this morning.
WE ALL HAVE OUR DIAGNOSIS STORY.
To make my son's short and sweet, because I'm sure it's identical to at least some of the parents who will read this: I noticed the signs, having a medical background, I argued with the doctor for about a week regarding the possibility. Finally, on Friday, I convinced the doctor to do a urine sample which resulted in a hospital admission a few hours later. A week after his second birthday, our son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. He wasn't in DKA (Diabetic Ketoacidosis - in regular words body toxicity due to excessive blood glucose and the result thereof). That was a relief, but he did look and feel like crap and his BG (blood glucose) was 796. I'll tell this story in more depth one day, but the was the catalyst for my husband and I coining the word "babybetes". Definition: T1d in a (young) child. It's not so rare anymore, unfortunately.
Our timeline is as follows from there:
October 2012: Starts Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor
April 2013: Starts Omnipod Insulin Pump
December 2013: Stops pump due to skin reactions
April 2014: Begins Medtronic Minimed Pump
September 2014: Diabetic Alert Dog arrives!
October 2014: Live with Nightscout!
(It's funny how T1Parents wear these events like badges)
... January 2015: Back on injections.
And this is basically what this whole introductory post/ spur of the moment-create a blog so I can talk about this to the world- is about.
Things change. When my son was 2, I was hypersensitive about him having all the "best" medical tech available. But now he's 4.5 roughly, and he wants to go back in injections. Which is like back to the stone-age, as far as diabetes care in 2015 is concerned. He gets tired of the knots under his skin from the steel cannulas bumping. He gets tired of rough dry, itchy skin from adhesives eating away at it. He gets tired of his bulky pump pulling down his pants and having to ask permission to poop so that we can help him disconnect the tubing.
Who could blame him?
So when he told me last week that he wanted to go back on MDI (multiple daily injections), I said "Okay, let's do it". Even though just a few short years ago I couldn't imagine how anyone would choose shots over a pump.
And just like that, I changed, again.
And if you don't have a diabetic kid, you don't know what this means. But that's okay, I'm here to educate. This means instead of pushing buttons on a pump to calculate insulin dosages and deliver insulin, via a little site placed under the skin every three days, he gets about 4-6 shots every day. I'm the calculator. I'm the injector. I'm the pancreas.
But I'm okay with it. Because the fact of the matter is that the grass isn't always greener with the newest technology... everything has a downside. (Don't get me wrong I wouldn't trade our NightScout or DAD for anything)
I think what I've learned is that I'm resilient, almost as resilient as my bright and brave little boy. We're more intelligent because we know more about this disease now than most physicians (except some endocrinologists). And just like in the beginning, we're still ahead of the curve, even when we have setbacks or purposefully set ourselves back).
I'd love to hear about how you adapted to a change related to T1d recently.
