- She hasn't been having a great year at school. Her last 2 years at the same school were wonderful, and she woke up excited to go every morning. Lately she's been telling me that she wants to stay home.
- She's really skinny. She's growing in height rapidly, but she seems to be getting skinnier. Her pants that fit her waist are much too short, and the ones that are long enough fall down because she's a waif. Perhaps that is because . . .
- She hasn't been eating well. Many nights it was a struggle to get her to eat even a few bites of her dinner. I chalked it up to 4-year-old picky eating.
- She's pale, and has dark circles under her eyes that look like bruises. This crept up so slowly that it's only now and looking back that I can see the change in her.
- Her general mood has been different. She's been irritable, and fussy. Sometimes she's over-the-top hyper and can't calm herself enough to put on her pajamas.
- She started having accidents again at nap time. She had been dry for many months, and lately I've been putting her in a pull-up again.
- A few months ago, she was dry a couple nights per week. She still wore a pull-up to bed, and more than half the time it would be wet in the morning. But the last couple months, she's been waking up with a soaked pull-up, drenched pajamas, and wet sheets.
- Three or four weeks ago, she started drinking water like crazy. We went on a 5-hour trip in the car, and she drank 5 or 6 cups of water. We, of course, stopped every 45 hours for her to go to the bathroom.
- She got a rash that wouldn't heal after several weeks. At first it came and went, and then it came and stayed and worsened.
These things happened so slowly, over many months, that it took me awhile to realize they weren't just phases she was going through. And then last Monday, it hit me and I just knew what was going on with her. We took her to the doctor on Tuesday, and it turns out that I was right.
Annie has type I diabetes.
Here's a picture of Annie in the Emergency Department after her visit with her pediatrician.
She was admitted and we stayed for 3 days. They sent her home with her blood sugars still in the 400s persistently. Here she is in one of the Child Life rooms in the hospital.
This is the insulin-requiring diabetes. It cannot be controlled with diet and exercise. Her pancreas stopped making insulin, and her body cannot turn her food into energy without insulin, so we now give it to her in shot form 4 to 6 times per day. There is no other treatment at this time, and unless one is developed, she will need insulin injected in some fashion for the rest of her life.
We prick her finger to check her blood sugar at least 5 times per day. One of those times is at 3 am. If her blood sugar is low during the night, I might check her several times.
I'm reeling. Pete is too, although he's confident that everything will be fine, so he's holding it together a bit more than I am. Annie is fine, for the most part. She keeps a book and puts check marks every time she gets a shot, a finger poke, or some other medicine, and making these check marks is great motivation for her right now. She sets up her glucometer, and puts her little drop of blood on the strip that reads her blood sugar. She chooses which finger to poke, and where to inject her insulin each time.
I felt like we were barely getting by with everything Lively needs and now this. I'm not sure how to find enough hours in the day to take care of my children anymore. And I'm not sure why this is happening to my family. I can't believe there's a reason behind it.
