So that's where the clever 1 comes from in the blog title. See what I did? In my younger years, I'm sure I would have come up with something far more clever, and yet presently, that's the best I can muster.
Someone told me today that "someone could LEARN from how you're handling the Type 1 diagnosis." That really struck a chord for me, because I don't feel like I am doing anything different than any parent would, but since people all do things differently, I may be. So here it goes. People have been asking how I "knew" he had diabetes (moms just know), and so here's how that all went down.
Number One Son, a couple weeks before Christmas, started drinking more than usual (CLASSIC DIABETES SIGN). He complained of being more thirsty in the evenings, and chalked it up to "teachers don't want us getting drinks all day long when we're doing classwork", which as a teacher seemed perfectly reasonable. I don't know if you've ever had the privilege of having one student ask to get a drink of water and then the rest of them need one, and before long you're ten minutes into water drinks for everyone... So it seemed reasonable. I know his teacher, and I trust her drink-to-kid-ratio judgement. So we let him drink as much as he wanted to "get caught up". About a week later, he started wetting the bed at night. I'm sure if he knew I was writing this, he'd be not entirely pleased... but in the interest of maybe helping someone at some point... that's what happened. (CLASSIC DIABETES SIGN). We're not talking normal, run-of-the-mill amounts of pee, either. We bought some of the heavy-duty overnight pull-ups for him, and when even those couldn't stem the flow of the copious amounts of urine, we bought some disposable bed mats for him which helped--but still didn't completely contain the overnight deluge. He has never been a kid to wake up in the night, and he was waking up two or three times to pee--and STILL PEEING THIS MUCH. I'm a little guilty to say now that I was more annoyed with the extra laundry than I ought to have been...
And then one night we told him he couldn't have any more drinks before bed, because we needed to try and slow down the peeing. And he became hysterical. Begging for water. BEGGING. I have never seen anything quite like it in my life, and it was terrible. And so we gave him some sips, and felt like asshole parents (and feel even more like assholes now about that incident...) I remember saying to him around that time one night when he was coming out of the bathroom and heading to his bed how "tall and skinny" he was getting (LOSING WEIGHT--CLASSIC DIABETES SIGN) but I didn't put that together until later.
Then one morning, after Christmas and the new year... January 9th... we had a delay from school for fog or something, I don't remember what... but The Feisty One woke up screaming with an ear infection, and so I made plans to take him for his appointment. Son Number One came out of his room with his overflowing pull-up, and in that instant, I'm not sure what clicked, but I just knew that he was diabetic. I can't say what made me realize it that quickly, but I made him an appointment with the pediatrician for that afternoon.
Once we got there, our pediatrician, who I adore, looked over The Feisty One, and confirmed his ear infection. (Good job, Mom, for figuring that one out.) Then the conversation shifted to Son Number One. "Does he drink enough during the day?" Well, he doesn't think so. "Can you get him a water bottle?" Yeah, we can. We will... I know... Probably an easy fix. "I mean, we can check his urine and see what that tells us... and if that comes back we can check his blood, I guess." OK. And so off we went, me telling my 6 year old kid how to pee in the "hat" on the toilet with the impending sense of doom, knowing in my heart what the diagnosis was going to be. After a couple minutes, the nurse came back into the room with a little slip of paper, and said something quietly to the doctor who then told us that they were indeed going to check his blood... and that she "didn't want to tell us what she thought it was..." but she didn't need to, since I had already put that together before the appointment.
They checked his blood (it was 441--which is loads higher than it should be), our awesome pediatrician (who I adore) told us about when her own son was diagnosed, they brought in stuffed animals for both boys, a nurse on staff with Type 1 came in to talk to us for a minute... They called the hospital to plan for his admission, and looked at all of us with pity, and soon we were on our way.
It was a surreal hour. I remember thinking "Well, this is the last day that I woke up with four kids and no lifelong illnesses." I remember actually giving myself some "mom points" for figuring it out as soon as I did (and feeling guilty for not figuring it out sooner). I remember thinking that before that day, if someone would have been given crappy news, I would have taken them for an ice cream cone or something as a treat to distract them, but that was obviously out of the question. And I remember thinking that if I freak out, or if I start crying or making it seem like anything is totally out of the ordinary, that my sweet and strong 6 year old boy would be afraid. The one thing I wanted more than anything was for him to not be afraid.
And so that's just been that. It is his (and our family's) new "normal" (and by that, I obviously just mean one more layer of the chaos that already existed) and we are adapting. Being sad or mad or bitter doesn't do anyone any good, so I am actively trying to stay positive and to make sure that he does, too. More to come later... if I am on the ball... but for now, 100% of my minions are asleep, so I'd be foolish not to at least attempt to sleep myself.
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ReplyDeleteLove you so much! Thank you for sharing!! Rebecca
ReplyDeleteBack at you. Thanks for letting me talk mom talk with you as needed, friend. ❤️
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