Not another one!!

For the longest time, we have been having trouble with Mikayla... she has been so tired and grumpy!! (yes, even more than usual...) She just wasn't herself, but we couldn't figure out why!! She refused to go outside to play, she wouldn't get out of bed in the mornings to go to school... she just wanted to lay around all day. Pretty soon, I was getting calls from her school saying that she was constantly asking to go to the bathroom, or crying just after lunch that she was starving... even though she had just eaten her whole lunch! At home, she was eating massive amounts of food... she could out eat Brian!! and constantly drinking... she went from drinking half of a glass of milk with dinner to drinking 3 and asking for more... but for some reason she was still loosing weight!! She was literally skin and bones!!

Brian and I KNEW something was wrong, we just didn't know what... we started researching so many different diseases, we thought maybe she had worms, because she ate so much and was still so hungry, and losing weight... we looked up everything we could think of, but nothing fit!! Then one night I was watching TV and one of the people on the show I was watching started listing the symptoms of diabetes, and I knew immediately... that is what Kayla has!!! The next day I went to the Pediatricians office and I waited in the hall for her to come out of an exam room, and told her about Mikayla (she is awesome, and is so great with Kayla!!) she had me make an appointment for just after lunch, and I went and got Mikayla out of school and took her back to the doctor.

When we got there, we did all the usual things you have to do for a physical... it was lots of fun going in and helping her get a urine sample... she thought it was hilarious that she peed on my hand. Too bad I didn't think of asking the nurse for a glove!! Then we had to talk her into getting her finger poked... when they got her blood sample and ran her blood glucose, the nurse left the room immediately and called the doctor who was next door at the hospital doing her rounds. She said to bring Kayla to the ER immediately. They wouldn't even let her walk, or let me get the car... they took her in a wheelchair straight into the ER... It turns out the glucose monitor couldn't even read her blood sugar it was so high... they had to take another blood sample in the ER and have it processed in the lab. It turns out that her blood glucose (or the amount of sugar in her blood) was 904!!! (normal range for a child her age is 80-150!!) she was incredibly sick, and yes... she definitely had diabetes... she was transferred by ambulance up to the Children's Hospital and we stayed there for 3 days trying to get her blood sugar under control, and for Brian and I to learn how to care for a diabetic child... we had classes all day long for 3 days, learning how to count carbs, figure out her correction doses, add up her carbs and figure out her pre-meal doses, learn to give her shots, learn how to take care of her if her blood sugar got too low and she had a seizure (which is complicated by the fact that she is epileptic to begin with!!) It was so overwhelming!! And to add it on top of all her other medical issues she had anyways... I just couldn't fathom why this had happened to HER...

Now it's been 3 months since her diagnosis, and she is doing so great!! For a child that was so terrified of needles, and hated even the smell of anything medical (she always tells the nurses she hates the smell of the saline when they flush out her IV in the hospital... of course, saline solution is odorless, but the nurses tell me that a lot of kids say that!! weird!) She has really taken an active roll in her diabetes care. She sits down before every meal and writes out her meal plan, she adds up the carbs that she is going to be eating, and then goes to her chart and converts it into units of insulin. (Of course, I check her work, but she is ALWAYS RIGHT!!) When we have to check her blood sugar she sets up her kit, she likes to pick the finger we are going to poke, and she washes it with an alcohol pad, we poke her finger (this is the only step she won't do so far!) then she uses her glucometer to suck up the blood drop and she reads the number (or result, I guess) and goes back to her chart and converts it into insulin units for her correction dose... When she gets her shots, she sometimes freaks herself out and panics, but we just talk about it for a while, and I remind her that is just a little pinch and she usually just lets me (as long as she gets to pick the spot!!) Every once in a while, I have to sit on her, but she doesn't like that too much, so I usually only have to threaten it, and she gives in...

Most of you know Mikayla pretty well, and know that she is a very dependent child... she likes others to do everything for her... we are SO PROUD of her for taking the initiative with her new disease, and taking such an active roll. We believe that this is truly a blessing for Mikayla and for us... she has come a long way in such a short amount of time... it seems like treating her diabetes is even helping her cope with so many of her other health issues... somehow the diabetes is giving her a voice and a reason to take an active part in her own care. Never in a million years, when I heard that Kayla had ANOTHER health issue, would I ever have thought it would be a blessing... but it has been.

AMAZING!