Our 12 year old son had just been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, also referred to as Juvenile Onset Diabetes. We were still in shock when they told us that they were going to admit him for 3 days in the children's hospital. 3 days? What for?
As we were taken upstairs from the ER and checked into his room, they began setting up the schedule we would have for the next 3 days. He was to be in the hospital for 3 days so they could monitor his blood sugar levels and be able to prescribe the right amounts of insulin he would need, and also so that we could all go through 3 days of training on how to care for our son with T1 Diabetes. This would involve a class by a dietitian to go over diet and how to figure out how much insulin is needed per meal, a meeting with a social worker, meeting with a pharmacy technician, and then several training sessions with a nurse to learn about the physiology of Diabetes and how to handle low and high blood sugar.
Also upon check-in, they told us that both parents would need to be there the entire time to learn everything and practice injecting insulin. This was going to be a challenge with a dad working full time, and a mom with 3 other kids from age 2-9 who had school and other activities. We really weren't sure how we were going to make it work. My husband wasn't even there yet. Our other kids were getting out of school, and we didn't have any clothes or supplies ready for a 3 day hospital stay.
We still really didn't have a clue of how Diabetes would play a big part of everyday life. I didn't know anything. I thought you would just need to take insulin shots every day, or maybe before every meal, but I didn't know you needed to know an exact amount depending on how much food or what kinds of food you ate. I didn't understand how you got Diabetes. I didn't know there was so much to learn.
There really was no preparation for all of this. We didn't have too much family support. While we had some family that lived close by, my dad had just had shoulder surgery and was pretty sick still, and my husband's family didn't seem to think it was a big deal, so he had our good neighbors watch all our other children so he could come meet us at the hospital. The plans were to have him sleep overnight while I took care of the other kids at home, then in the morning after they were off to school, I would come up to the hospital with our youngest as well. Although the hospital really wanted both of us there the whole time, we didn't have much choice but to trade off every few hours so one of us could be there to pick up kids from school or handle other family responsibilities. We couldn't really have all 4 of our kids in the hospital room, and we could't leave them home alone---it was usually our 12 year old who would act as the babysitter and now here he was in the hospital.
There really was no preparation for all of this. We didn't have too much family support. While we had some family that lived close by, my dad had just had shoulder surgery and was pretty sick still, and my husband's family didn't seem to think it was a big deal, so he had our good neighbors watch all our other children so he could come meet us at the hospital. The plans were to have him sleep overnight while I took care of the other kids at home, then in the morning after they were off to school, I would come up to the hospital with our youngest as well. Although the hospital really wanted both of us there the whole time, we didn't have much choice but to trade off every few hours so one of us could be there to pick up kids from school or handle other family responsibilities. We couldn't really have all 4 of our kids in the hospital room, and we could't leave them home alone---it was usually our 12 year old who would act as the babysitter and now here he was in the hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment