Do you remember that day of your kid being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes? Overwhelming, scared, not sure how to keep your kid alive tomorrow! I remember. It was an evening and we went to urgent care because he did not feel good and he was urinating all the time. The NP that saw us happened to be one of my old professors from college. She told me we needed to go to the ER because he has Diabetes. I sucked up my emotions to drive to the emergency room. I replayed in my mind the last few months…what did I miss? I am a nurse pratitioner I sould have seen it coming but why didn’t I? Those are haunting questions that I could never answer. And sometimes we don’t have those answers.

When we got to the ER my husband showed up and I went to the bathroom and cried for what seemed like an hour. What no one knew is I saw patients each week in dialysis from not taking care of their diabetes, very ill sick patients. Type 1 and my child. No way. NOT ME!!! Then realizing I am now the parent how am I going to keep him alive and never go to dialysis.

The days that follow were a blur. From the educator to the nurses I never left my childs side. Now how am I going to go back to work and let someone else watch my child. I did not think I could take care of him well who else was going to help take care of him. While I was a mess, my son took it in stride. He did not like the shots (but who does) and he faced it like a soilder. He went about what he needed to do. He can educate anyone what is exactly occuring in his body than anyone around him incluiding me. With the weight of his diabetes and any little thing could kill him, training the nurse at the school even, trying to teach family, and trying to learn it as a parent made life in general overwhelming. No wonder it took 3 years to really go out and enjoy a date with my husband or have a sitter in charge of him. Type 1 can rule your life and the entire family. If you are on shots, meals have to be a certain times. If on a pumps, you are always adjusting the basal rates or sensitivities or ratios.

As I became more comfortable leaving Quincy with others it was only because I trusted him and trusted he knew his body. Not  because I had a good method to teach a sitter. Type 1 ruled my life every minute of every day. Now that he is a teenager I don’t worry about leaving him. I do have a consistent sitter, but more for my younger child than him (she does help him often). He watches my younger child more often than anyone else. No resources were avaible to help train the sitter for my son so we made one.

What I want to know is how other parents dealt with diagnosis day of Type 1 diabetes? What was that like? Where you able to keep normalcy or did your world suddenly get small? If it got small when did you open up and allow it to enlarge?

Type 1 Diabetes can overwhelm and rule your life until you feel you can rule it…when does that really occur though.