Ladyof1Momof3
06-08-2008, 03:54 AM
On April 30, 2007, my family’s lives changed forever due to the onset of Type I Diabetes in K.J, our oldest son. I took K. J. (alias) (age 8 at the time), to the doctor. He had been up every hour during the night to urinate. He had also been experiencing weird problems including extreme thirst, lack of appetite, weight loss, and dry skin to name a few. The doctor examined him and found nothing at that time. A nurse took his urine and blood samples and told us we could go home. About fifteen minutes later, the nurse called me and said, “Take your son to the emergency room (ER) immediately, his blood sugar is over 800!” I gathered K.J and my other two younger sons, T.J. (age 6 at the time) and S.A. (age 4) at the time) (aliases are used to protect identities of minors), grabbed some snacks and bag of activities and sped to the ER. As soon as I stepped into the ER, my emotions overtook me and my eyes became blurry as I walked up to the Triage check-in. Thoughts were going through my head in a swirl.
:confused:
How did this happen? What did I do wrong? I have always been strict on their diet and intake of junk food, drinks and candy. My sons took vitamins everyday since they were babies. We had each of them enrolled in little league baseball, soccer and basketball. I made sure they ate a green vegetable at least once a day. What is it now? I could barely see the lines on the application as I checked him into the hospital. The nurses immediately called K.J. in and started administering several medications and IV’s to flush his body of the sugar. :(
My husband and I had just moved to Denton, Texas from Atlanta, Georgia away from all of our family to finish college, I was to finish my last 30 hours of my bachelor’s in General Studies and my husband was finishing up his Th. M. Our family is close-knit so every week in Atlanta, my husband and I took the kids to see a Grandma (his mother or mine), an aunt (one of his two sisters) or Grand dad (his father) to just sit around and eat together. There was always something going on in the family for us to attend. In Denton, it is just the five of us, my husband, me and the boys.
Since we became full-time students, our income changed from a $90K range to $20K range with him working full-time while I sought governmental benefits to make ends meet until I found a part-time job. We made a choice not to use daycare but instead save the money and arrange our school schedule around our class-times, his and mine. With this arrangement, one or both of us would be at home by 2 pm to get our sons from the bus stop after school or available to attend our sons’ school functions or volunteer at the school from time to time. If we were in Atlanta when K.J. was diagnosed with his diabetes, our family would have helped out in some way or the other, but things have worked out without them somehow.
I chose to join the Children with Diabetes online community because of an incident that happened on the last day of school. I was approached by one of the lunch room servers. She knew of my son’s condition but did not get to meet me until that time because I always fed breakfast K.J. at home in the mornings. It was my assurance that he would eat according to his doctor’s orders. The last week of school, my work schedule changed so I had to be at work by 8 am which took away time for me to cook a hot meal. I would walk the boys into the cafeteria and help pick out K.J.’s breakfast. The lunch server gave me her contact information and told me that she also had a son with Type I Diabetes. She mentioned that K.J. would look at her funny because she took special care to speak to him when he came through the lunch line. She just wanted us to know that she empathized with our situation because of her son and she wanted her son to get to know K.J. as well. I felt glad to know that she was there to “keep an eye” my son even though I did not know of her.
From this conversation, I felt a connection and thought it would be nice to have get to know more parents with children of T1D.
:o
:confused:
How did this happen? What did I do wrong? I have always been strict on their diet and intake of junk food, drinks and candy. My sons took vitamins everyday since they were babies. We had each of them enrolled in little league baseball, soccer and basketball. I made sure they ate a green vegetable at least once a day. What is it now? I could barely see the lines on the application as I checked him into the hospital. The nurses immediately called K.J. in and started administering several medications and IV’s to flush his body of the sugar. :(
My husband and I had just moved to Denton, Texas from Atlanta, Georgia away from all of our family to finish college, I was to finish my last 30 hours of my bachelor’s in General Studies and my husband was finishing up his Th. M. Our family is close-knit so every week in Atlanta, my husband and I took the kids to see a Grandma (his mother or mine), an aunt (one of his two sisters) or Grand dad (his father) to just sit around and eat together. There was always something going on in the family for us to attend. In Denton, it is just the five of us, my husband, me and the boys.
Since we became full-time students, our income changed from a $90K range to $20K range with him working full-time while I sought governmental benefits to make ends meet until I found a part-time job. We made a choice not to use daycare but instead save the money and arrange our school schedule around our class-times, his and mine. With this arrangement, one or both of us would be at home by 2 pm to get our sons from the bus stop after school or available to attend our sons’ school functions or volunteer at the school from time to time. If we were in Atlanta when K.J. was diagnosed with his diabetes, our family would have helped out in some way or the other, but things have worked out without them somehow.
I chose to join the Children with Diabetes online community because of an incident that happened on the last day of school. I was approached by one of the lunch room servers. She knew of my son’s condition but did not get to meet me until that time because I always fed breakfast K.J. at home in the mornings. It was my assurance that he would eat according to his doctor’s orders. The last week of school, my work schedule changed so I had to be at work by 8 am which took away time for me to cook a hot meal. I would walk the boys into the cafeteria and help pick out K.J.’s breakfast. The lunch server gave me her contact information and told me that she also had a son with Type I Diabetes. She mentioned that K.J. would look at her funny because she took special care to speak to him when he came through the lunch line. She just wanted us to know that she empathized with our situation because of her son and she wanted her son to get to know K.J. as well. I felt glad to know that she was there to “keep an eye” my son even though I did not know of her.
From this conversation, I felt a connection and thought it would be nice to have get to know more parents with children of T1D.
:o