Here we were going on Day 3 at the hospital, and it was somewhat depressing.
One thing you can notice by this picture is how extremely skinny he is. Here he was a 12 year old boy who only weighed 64 pounds. I'm pretty sure his younger brother and sister only weigh about 8 pounds less. He was always wearing this thick winter coat all day long, even when he was inside, so he his his weight loss well. I feel bad I didn't pay enough attention.
Although he wasn't really sick, they required our son to wear a mask or have everyone else wear a mask when entering his room. He couldn't leave and go to the much talked about kids' playroom, and so he was stuck in his room for almost the whole stay. They did at times bring him different toys he could play with in which they would sanitize later. The only reason they were taking this precaution is because when I first brought him in, I thought he may have had strep, and so although the initial test came up negative, they were keeping him confined until a much more detailed test (which obviously must take 2 days to figure out???) came back negative as well. It's hard enough that you just got diagnosed with T1 Diabetes, but then it's harder when you see all the other kids in the wing running around playing and going to the playroom when you are stuck in your room.
One thing you can notice by this picture is how extremely skinny he is. Here he was a 12 year old boy who only weighed 64 pounds. I'm pretty sure his younger brother and sister only weigh about 8 pounds less. He was always wearing this thick winter coat all day long, even when he was inside, so he his his weight loss well. I feel bad I didn't pay enough attention.
Although he wasn't really sick, they required our son to wear a mask or have everyone else wear a mask when entering his room. He couldn't leave and go to the much talked about kids' playroom, and so he was stuck in his room for almost the whole stay. They did at times bring him different toys he could play with in which they would sanitize later. The only reason they were taking this precaution is because when I first brought him in, I thought he may have had strep, and so although the initial test came up negative, they were keeping him confined until a much more detailed test (which obviously must take 2 days to figure out???) came back negative as well. It's hard enough that you just got diagnosed with T1 Diabetes, but then it's harder when you see all the other kids in the wing running around playing and going to the playroom when you are stuck in your room.
Being in the hospital was also pretty lonely. While we were lucky to have my dad and step mom and my husband's sister come up to see our son, nobody else came. We could not believe that our son would stay 3 days in the hospital without any other family coming to see him. But then again, there were many that just didn't understand. They didn't realize this was a big thing, and so why did they need to come?
He did have a great scout troop, that instead of their weekly activity, they all came up to visit him in the hospital. Now that was awesome.
While the first day was really sad, as our son took it as sort of a death sentence, and my husband pretty much in freak out mode, by the end of the 2nd day we were somewhat adjusting. Well, maybe we were adjusting to life in the hospital. While I was the one in the past who was always first to lose it or have an emotional breakdown, here I was forced to be the strong one telling my boys that everything would be alright. Who knew what would happen when we got to go home. Everything was so safe here with doctors and nurses to answer your every question and make sure you were doing things right, but at home we would be on our own.
I did know that our son wanted to get out of there. He was in 7th grade, and while it was a break from school, we knew there was a lot of work stacking up that he would have to make up. Many of the teachers gave him an a break and sort of a pass from all the work he had missed, although he did have a lot of math assignments that he was making up while in the hospital.
It was Wednesday night, and we were hoping he would get to go home by Thursday at dinnertime.
We just had to go through a bit more in training, and we all had to have successfully administered a shot of insulin and checked his blood sugar.
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