Following on from my post about the age of diagnosis, I have been thinking about the 'type' of diagnosis, or the 'health' of the child at diagnosis.
Obviously the child is not in particularly good health as they would have been living as an undiagnosed diabetic, which let's face it would have been making them feel very poorly, as well as the weight loss, and the thirst etc. However, we were very lucky with Samuel, he never really got sick, he was never admitted into hospital, and to people who didn't know, on the outside you would never have known he was ill.
Unfortunately that isn't always the case. Some parents have their child diagnosed in much more horrific ways. They don't realise anything is wrong until the child hits the floor and goes into a coma. They carry their child into A & E hours away from death, maybe minutes or sometimes, in the most worst cases they arrive too late.
The way in which diagnosis occurs has to have an impact on how you move forward as a family. I feel lucky that we had the diagnosis we did. Generally speaking I am a laid back person. I try not to worry too much about things that I can't control, and diabetes is something that I can't easily control. Don't get me wrong, I worry every day about Samuel, and obviously I know how serious an illness it is, but because he has never been 'ill' I think that it is all to easy to 'forget' just for a moment.
On the flip side if they were really poorly how do you get that image out of your head? How do you function knowing how close you came to losing them, and knowing how easily it could happen again?
I don't know the answer, all I know is is that we take it one day at a time. We are thankful for the good days, try and learn from the bad, and hope that one day we may have a cure.
i have a son of the same age as yours and he was diagnosed last july. he is type 1 with 2 injections a day that he has just learnt to do himself(it makes me feel sick watching) which i am very proud he is willing to do. when we suspected he MIGHT be diabetic he was so ill, he lost almost half his body weight, he had no energy, he drank, and urinated constantly. by the time it clicked that these were all the things my mother went through(she was type1 but passed 13yrs ago) we took him straight to the doctors only to find his blood sugar level was 28 plus. we were told had we had to wait for an appointment with a specialist but took it upon ourselves to take him to a&e as the wait was 6 weeks. luckly we did this as his level went up to 29 on the journey and we were told had it gone .5-1 mmol higher he could have ended up in a coma or worse died. i am so grateful that i went through my mother having the illness(that sounds wrong i know) as it gave me the strenght i needed to help him get through the worst. he is now fine and we manage really well. he has had 1 serious attack where he collapsed but all in all he is coping so well. kids who have this make me wonder where they get there strength from!
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