Where to start....

Thinking back at 2014 and what a year it was for me and my family... I got pregnant with our second boy early in 2014, I turned 30, moved into a new home and welcomed our second baby boy Dylan on October 20th. So many memorable, special moments that I will carry with me always... Despite all these wonderful moments that I cherish so much, 2014 marks my life as the year my oldest son Jackson (2) was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. For this reason I have decided to start writing about our lives as parents of a young diabetic in hope of maybe helping people understand the disease and possibly help others that may have same struggles as we do. So here I go...

How this all got started.... Here is some background on how this all came to be.

In June 2014, I was about 6/7 months pregnant and my husband Olivier was concerned about some symptoms that Jackson was having. Drinking a lot, like abnormally a lot of liquids. He was waking up soaked in urine from head to toe night after night and signs of dry mouth even after drinking lots of water.

Olivier was at a baseball game and a buddy asked him how Jackson was doing he said he was great but Olivier was concerned about these symptoms. A guy on the bench next to my husband said "sorry but I overheard the symptoms you mentioned and just so you know, diabetes runs in my family you might wanna have your boy checked out."

So of course my husband starts looking up and reading about diabetes. Well he starts getting concerned and he discussed it with me but I was like "no way he's no diabetic" I thought my husband was going crazy with reading stuff online. A week later, June 24, 2014, Jackson had a medical appointment with our family doctor and my husband took him to discuss the symptoms he was having as well as other small things I had noted. Once at the doctors, Olivier was discussing my list of things with the doctor and our doctor kept coming back to the bedwetting and she was concerned about that. So to get results as soon as possible she sent my Husband and Jackson to CHEO (children's hospital of eastern Ontario) to have tests done.

Once at the hospital they did a urine test and blood test on Jackson and then sent them home. They were leaving and were in the hospital parking lot and getting ready to leave, our family doctor called my husband on his cell phone and said bring Jackson back into the hospital right away. CHEO had called our doctor and said that Jackson was in fact diabetic and they found sugar in Jackson's urine (a clear sign a diabetes).

My husband immediately called me,  it was 3:30 and I was leaving work walking to my car in poring rain. I will never forget that call. I was soaking wet getting in my car. Olivier said "you have to come meet me at CHEO.... Jackson has diabetes". My heart stopped.... As a mom I can't even put in words what I was feeling a cocktail of sadness, scared, guilt, confusion.... I was awful. I was driving to the hospital crying and not really understand what diabetes meant really.... Was my son going to die? Will he live a normal life? Is this my fault? It was the longest drive of my life. I remember also calling my parents on my way. I was crying so hard....

Once at the hospital, all I did was hold my 2 year old son in my arms and cry. Poor little guy, he had no idea what was going on, he was in a good mood just tired since he had not had his afternoon nap. the nurses came in and took more blood work and also put an intravenous in his arm. Jackson was so good took all the needles and then looked at the nurse and would say "merci".

I would start crying again, thats the kind of sweet child my husband and I are blessed with. We stayed at the hospital that day till about 9 pm. His blood sugar level at the hospital was 32 meant nothing to me at the time but so you understand a normal kid his age blood sugar should be between 6 and 10 so 32 was very high! They gave Jackson some insulin and told us to go eat and come back.... So we did then they said we could go home but had to come back to the diabetes clinic the next morning they told us we had a few days of learning ahead of us so go home and rest. So at this point we are going home with little and almost no information but we have our son at home with us and that's all that mattered to me.

Over the next week we spent 4 half days at CHEO with the amazing diabetes team there, learning about our sons Type 1 diabetes: the injections and how to administer the needles, the signs to look for for hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) and hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar) , his new"diet", when he's sick, checking his blood sugar levels and so on.... It was so much to take in lots of informations for sure but we did pretty good took it all in and it was hard. Hardest week of my life. I was so scared, scared of the unknown and petrified at the idea of giving needles to my son.... But at some point I remember looking at him (jackson) and thinking.... He is the brave one! The one that needs to get needles everyday, the one that needs to live with diabetes. So I decided to be brave for him.... He is just amazing.

My Husband and I do the best we can and try to do everything we can to give Jackson the most normal life possible. Through this blog I will try to shed some light on the decease, on raising a diabetic and the challenges we face day to day. I decided to do this as a form of therapy for myself but I hope others may be interested. If not that's ok too. :)

Hope you enjoy my blog on being on mom and raising a Type 1 diabetic.

xoxo


Next post : Explaining type 1 diabetes.