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Its only been a little over a year, so I don’t say I have the stories that others have about diabetes, but I’m sure there will be plenty in the years to come.
There are two days that really stick out in my mind though.
The first being the night that Amy was diagnosed.
There were a few things that triggered in my mind that Amy could have diabetes. The two main symptoms included drinking A LOT and dribbling in her panties throughout the night. She was a child that didn’t usually drink much and here she was going to the fridge reloading her water bottle and she had never wet the bed. I was hoping it was just a UTI and had scheduled an appointment for her with our family physician. For the time being, we started restricting her water. We wouldn’t let her drink anything after bedtime snack. After a huge bruise appeared on her leg from playing xbox kinect, I went to work and brought home a glucometer to test her sugar. She was 19mmol/L. Long story short (you can read our full diagnosis story here), when I brought her over to the emergency department and they got ready to give her the first shot of insulin, she started to wail and say “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll stop drinking so much!” This totally broke my heart, and I will always remember the look of terror in her face.
The other story was about a week later.
We were sitting at the table eating tacos for supper. Amy stopped mid-chew and nonchalantly said “Having diabetes is better than being dead”. I just smiled at her and said “yes baby, that’s right”, excused myself from the table, went to the bathroom and had a good cry. I think that was the first big cry I had about the diagnosis, and likely won’t be the last in the years to come.
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I love your 2nd story of your memories blog - with your daughter's words that made you weep. I'm the same way. I've seen dear friends of mine die of cancer - my sailboat - Jenna's Journey is named after a young brave 17 year old - who fought her battle with cancer. When we'd meet up - me with my pump full of insulin - and her with her pain meds - we made the most of the time we had together ( http://www.diabetes1.org/blogs/Annas_Blog/Cancer_or_diabetes (. Perhaps if she'd had diabetes - she'd still be around .... "Having diabetes is better han being dead". Thank you soooooo much for your post!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words.
DeleteOn a side note, my grandmother was diagnosed in the 50s, she's lived nearly 60 years with diabetes, and is doing quite well. She is a great inspiration for us.
My ds was dx'd less than 6m ago, at age 16. In those first weeks, when I would wake him in the morning, he would often look at me and with a big grin, 'yep, I didn't die last night.' Yes, I can so relate to your second story.
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