I suppose there are many parents out there that may be aware of the signs of type 1 diabetes. I'm sure there are many people who are familiar with diabetes by having some one in the family or a friend who has dealt with it. I'm sure there are many out there who would recognize the symptoms right away and get their child checked out by a doctor. Well, we weren't one of them. We didn't have a clue.
The signs and symptoms were all there if we had known any better. They probably had been going on for several months! Our son was 11 years old at the time. He was a pretty healthy kid. He had a little bit of asthma, but nothing major.
At the beginning of his first year in Junior High School, he began not feeling well on and off. He would come home from school not feeling well, but then he'd eat a snack and be fine a half hour later. He would be fine and go to dance classes, but then complain that toward the end of class he felt a little sick. We really didn't worry because the bouts of not feeling well were so short and sporadic. It just seemed a little weird. He was always fine in the end.
Another month into the school year we started to notice that his hands were all of the sudden incredibly dry. So dry in fact that we thought he had been chemically burned from some experiment in health class. We tried all kinds of lotions and creams for months, but his hands continued to crack and bleed and look burned up to his wrists.
It seemed as if he was awfully emotional lately. He would get upset by the littlest of things or angry and frustrated so easily. But then of course, he did have Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high functioning autism, so maybe it was part of that, or he was reaching puberty, so maybe it was just some extra hormones kicking in.
At dance classes, we looked to see if he would be moving up to the next levels, and the comments came that he was just so thin. Others around us all seemed to comment on how skinny he was. We had realized his thinness, but just assumed he was going through a growth spurt. We were always trying to get him to eat more to bulk him up a bit.
So, all these little bits of signs were there, but he seemed like a regular happy kid to us.
When he turned 12, we noticed that all of the sudden he was up going the bathroom an awful lot at night. We would send him to bed at 9, but then he would be running up the stairs at 10, midnight, 1 am, 3 am.....it was insane! At first I thought, "Good grief! What is this boy drinking at night!?" Then I thought maybe he had a bladder or urinary tract infection. It was crazy. I even googled his symptoms and nothing really came up except for overactive bladder or incontinence. I was getting rather annoyed that the bathroom was becoming such a mess. He had such urgency that he was rushing to get to the bathroom and was often missing the bowl. I was cleaning the toilet and floor almost after every bathroom visit!
This is when I thought something has got to be up. It's got to be some sort of bladder infection. He had an appointment with the doctor in the next week for a check up, and so I thought he hasn't complained about any pain so maybe we'll just get him started on some home remedies like cranberry juice or supplements.
Then he got sick. He had a fever and wasn't hungry. His fever was really high---101.8 degrees. We gave him some motrin and sent him to bed. In the morning he was worse. He complained his throat really hurt and we checked his temperature and it was 103.8! That was enough for me to want to get him to the doctor right away. But what we suspected was strep throat. I made an appointment with his pediatrician and took him in.
The nurses and doctor ask you why you are there. Our initial reason was the high fever and sore throat, but as long as we were there, I commented on the frequent urination and the redness and rash of his hands and wrists. Might as well get everything taken care of all in one visit! They did a strep test, examined his hands, and then had him leave a urine sample. I figured they would come in to tell us he had strep, but that wasn't the case. Or maybe he did have a urinary tract infection and that had caused the high fever. I wasn't so worried about his hands. I thought they might prescribe some prescription cream or something.
Well, the doctor came back in and I knew something was up because he closed the door. Pretty much they leave the doors open when we have been there, or maybe I hadn't paid attention, but it just seemed a little weird at the time.
No, he didn't have strep (at least the initial test had come up negative), his hands were a problem of washing too much with antibacterial soap (which we would later learn it was more because he was going the bathroom so often he was washing his hands way too much), but then there was the problem of his urine sample. This was it, I thought. He's got a bladder infection. But that is not what the doctor said.
He began talking about something called Ketones and having sugar in the urine or something. I'm still thinking he has a bad urinary tract infection, but the doctor is going on about things I'm not familiar with and really not making sense, but then he throws out the word "Diabetes". I'm very confused at why he would be talking about this. He says we need to take him up to the children's hospital emergency department right now and that if what he suspected were true, that they would admit our son and he would stay there for the next 3 days!? What? How? I was bringing him in for strep throat. What was going on? Panicked as we were, but still confused, and a bit thinking the hospital might think differently, we headed on to the hospital with too much running through our heads.
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