Wednesday, March 08, 2006
The Beginning - Jan 27
On Friday, January 27th I recieved a phone call from my wife. She told me that our son had Type I diabetes.
For those who have heard those words, you can imagine what I felt, mostly shock and confusion - followed quickly by 'what does this mean?'. Like most people I knew a little about diabetes, but mainly about Type II. My wife quickly explained what this meant - blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections.
At the time I was in business in Canada and was due to fly out on the next flight in the morning. So in typical male fashion I dealt with this by doing research and looking for solutions, the tears did not come until much later - 4 days to be exact.
By the time I arrived home, my wife and Cade had already been in hospital for a day. Cade was looking happy and asking about going to the playground, he was simply pleased to see me after a two week break, and in typical 3 1/2 year old fashion was not too phased by the new surroundings. He was exceptionally proud that he had a finger prick without crying in the morning.
The rest of his stay is largely a blur, hours spent with diabetes educators learing about insulin inections, monitoring and carb counting. I vividly remember the first injection I needed to give - the first was actually my wife, just saline. Cade's first injection was really hard, he had enough by the stage to know he did not like it and wiggled a lot -but they would not let us go until both my wife and I had done one each.
On Monday I got to pick up the necessary items for dealing with diabetes, the needles, lancets, monitor, sharps bin, glucose strips, ketone strips and insulin. For those who don't remember what it was like - I felt like I'd cleaned out an entire drug store - and all that 'stuff' scared the crap out of me.
Finally on Tuesday we got to take him home. And finally the tears came - they would not stop - someone had decided to make my son's life difficult, and I would have done anything to fix it. For days all I could see was a future of injections, being careful what was eating and nothing else. When you are a parent you often look forward in your childs life, the first day of school, first road trip without the parents, learning to ride, learning to ski, for weeks I could not see these things all I could see was managing his diabetes and explaining it to people.
My first low point, and not the last.
Luckily for us, the diabetes service in my city is exceptionally good. Within 2 days of getting him home the diabetes educator had already been to his daycare and done training with the staff there. Cade was back in daycare by the end of the week, with a lot of calls to them from his dad. The daycare has also been exceptionally supportive of this, no problems what so ever. In fact as it turned out they got to deal with his first low.
A couple of days after this, my wife got sick. Nothing life threatening, but she is going to be in bed for a couple of months. So I am left in charge of Cade and his little sister.
Since I first found out, I have read everything I could find on diabetes management from types of drugs, to types of food and pumps, continous glucose monitoring. During my investigation on the web and trying to find out more about dealing with small children I stumbled across Penny's blog. Reading about her last 5 months gave me strength and made me realize that I was not alone - other people are experiencing the same feelings of hopelessness (it's a chronic disease), hopefulness (treatments are getting better), happiness (a single day staying in his target range), pride (the first time he reminds me to do his test when I'm in a hurry), guilt (a single day with way low and then way high).
And that leads us to here, and why I am blogging about this. In part because it's difficult to talk to my friends and family, I feeling like I'm trying to explain something I don't understand. In part because writing this down feels good. In part to provide hope to anyone who stumbles across my blog.
For those who have heard those words, you can imagine what I felt, mostly shock and confusion - followed quickly by 'what does this mean?'. Like most people I knew a little about diabetes, but mainly about Type II. My wife quickly explained what this meant - blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections.
At the time I was in business in Canada and was due to fly out on the next flight in the morning. So in typical male fashion I dealt with this by doing research and looking for solutions, the tears did not come until much later - 4 days to be exact.
By the time I arrived home, my wife and Cade had already been in hospital for a day. Cade was looking happy and asking about going to the playground, he was simply pleased to see me after a two week break, and in typical 3 1/2 year old fashion was not too phased by the new surroundings. He was exceptionally proud that he had a finger prick without crying in the morning.
The rest of his stay is largely a blur, hours spent with diabetes educators learing about insulin inections, monitoring and carb counting. I vividly remember the first injection I needed to give - the first was actually my wife, just saline. Cade's first injection was really hard, he had enough by the stage to know he did not like it and wiggled a lot -but they would not let us go until both my wife and I had done one each.
On Monday I got to pick up the necessary items for dealing with diabetes, the needles, lancets, monitor, sharps bin, glucose strips, ketone strips and insulin. For those who don't remember what it was like - I felt like I'd cleaned out an entire drug store - and all that 'stuff' scared the crap out of me.
Finally on Tuesday we got to take him home. And finally the tears came - they would not stop - someone had decided to make my son's life difficult, and I would have done anything to fix it. For days all I could see was a future of injections, being careful what was eating and nothing else. When you are a parent you often look forward in your childs life, the first day of school, first road trip without the parents, learning to ride, learning to ski, for weeks I could not see these things all I could see was managing his diabetes and explaining it to people.
My first low point, and not the last.
Luckily for us, the diabetes service in my city is exceptionally good. Within 2 days of getting him home the diabetes educator had already been to his daycare and done training with the staff there. Cade was back in daycare by the end of the week, with a lot of calls to them from his dad. The daycare has also been exceptionally supportive of this, no problems what so ever. In fact as it turned out they got to deal with his first low.
A couple of days after this, my wife got sick. Nothing life threatening, but she is going to be in bed for a couple of months. So I am left in charge of Cade and his little sister.
Since I first found out, I have read everything I could find on diabetes management from types of drugs, to types of food and pumps, continous glucose monitoring. During my investigation on the web and trying to find out more about dealing with small children I stumbled across Penny's blog. Reading about her last 5 months gave me strength and made me realize that I was not alone - other people are experiencing the same feelings of hopelessness (it's a chronic disease), hopefulness (treatments are getting better), happiness (a single day staying in his target range), pride (the first time he reminds me to do his test when I'm in a hurry), guilt (a single day with way low and then way high).
And that leads us to here, and why I am blogging about this. In part because it's difficult to talk to my friends and family, I feeling like I'm trying to explain something I don't understand. In part because writing this down feels good. In part to provide hope to anyone who stumbles across my blog.
# posted by Chris @ 10:38 PM 
