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Otherwise entitled: Wh
y don’t you just kill my kid?
During the month of September of 2008, I noticed that my 12 year old son, Alex, was looking a little thinner than usual. He’s always been very thin, so I chalked up the obvious weight loss to a new soccer season and his recent six inch height spike in less than three months.
After a week or so of soccer practices, Alex started taking a gallon milk just full of water to practice – and it was gone by the time I picked him up two hours later. It seemed odd to me, but not so off-the-wall odd that I thought he might be sick.
It wasn’t until one night when we were all sitting around the dining room table after dinner and I watched as Alex drank five full pint-size glasses of water while standing at the sink that I became really concerned. In the few days following, I noticed that Alex was exhausted after soccer, not just tired, but fall asleep in the car exhausted – even though our house was only a two minute drive from the field.
One day, Alex had to urinate so urgently that he made me pull the car over on our way up the hill to our house – he couldn’t wait another minute until we got home (luckily, we lived in a rural area then). I was very concerned and made an appointment to see the pediatrician. But then, that evening, it dawned on me – I’ll be he has diabetes. I just knew it. I’m not sure how. Something I had heard, or read just popped in my head.
I asked my husband to call his friend who has Type 1 diabetes and ask if we could use his meter to test Alex’s blood sugar the next morning. I knew from being pregnant so often – and from being a nursing assistant at one point in my life – that a normal blood sugar shouldn’t be higher than 140 or so. I made Alex fast all night. It was painful for him because he was starving. But he did it, and the next morning, after a 12 hour fast, his blood sugar was 276. Shockingly high for not having eaten at all.
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