August 2011: My daughter Alyssa comes down with some sort of rash in her mouth. How strange! Looks like thrush, like babies get, but she’s 13, not a newborn, so it couldn’t be! Or could it? She says it hurts and brushing her teeth makes her tongue bleed. So off to the clinic where they say yes, it is thrush and people other than babies can get it, although it’s rare. 10 days of oral medications, but its not gone completely so back to the dr where they say she must need the adult dosage. 7 more days of adult dosage. And all the while it’s making her mouth dry and she’s so thirsty because of it. She’s been playing on her ipod and now her fingers are all tingly, so I tell her to put the ipod away, it’s going to give her carpul tunnel syndrome and thats worse than thrush, I say! We go to cabin for a few days, medicine in tow and all of her clothes are loose on her. She must be growing too. I guess she’s going to be tall and thin like me. While away, she gets a bladder infection and is peeing ALL of the time. I fill her up with cranberry juice and it seems to maybe help a bit, but still lots of bathroom trips so once we get home we make a trip to the dr. Good time to go because she must have qot the flu too, as she isn’t feeling well. Poor kid, so many things at once!

Once at the drs I announce she has a bladder infection and she needs something for it. They run a quick urine test and come back in the room and say it doesn’t show any sign of infection, but they detected some glucose. HUH? Wonder why? They say we need to go for bloodwork in the morning, before breakfast. Alyssa is terrified. She HATES needles! The next morning she doesn’t want to get out of bed because she doesn’t want to go for bloodwork. Finally get her out of bed, out of the house and wait for a long time at the clinic waiting for our turn. Finally at 10am they call her name. She’s pretty much petrified. Too much time to think about it. But she puts on her bravest face and lets them poke her. I ask the nurse when the results would be in and she guesses maybe by tomorrow afternoon. So we leave there, I take ALyssa to the mall for a treat, more back to school clothes or anything that will make her feel better. BUt her pants are literally falling off. So first stop is to find new pants. She chooses a pair of comfy gym pants, in a smaller size than I’d expected so that they fit around the waist. Then headed off to her favorite brand name store to buy her some new tops, but she didn’t really see anything she liked and was eager to move on, so I took her to get some frozen yogurt, but by the time we got there she didn’t think it sounded appealing and said she was too tired and just wanted to go back to the car, but could we get a drink since she was so thirsty. That was probably our shortest shopping trip ever. The kid who could do laps around the mall was tired going down one wing? So off we go to pick up the baby from grammas and have lunch. We eat lunch and at 1:00 the phone rings. It’s the drs office! They want us to come back right now. But the nurse had said the results wouldn’t be in until tomorrow afternoon? So leave gramma with the baby again, call my husband with an update of sorts, and head back down there and they get us in right away. The dr seems very concerned and says he wants us to go check into the pediatric ward and he will call ahead and tell them we are comming. We hear him on the phone , every few words, and we catch “she’s a rack of bones” and “I’m sending her right over”.

We head right over to the hospital and I (naively) put one hour on the parking meter and head up stairs. The dr breaks the news to us that she has type 1 diabetes and my head starts swirling. Her numbers are 33mmol, when they should be 6. I don’t remember much of the conversation from there. I’m trying not to panic. They weigh her and I’m shocked to learn she’s lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks. I get that she has to stay in the hospital for a few days and they are prepping her hand for an iv. Oh no, not more needles, I think to myself. Alyssa hates needles! But again, she’s being a trooper. They take us to a room to put the iv in and she lays down. 20 minutes later the iv is still not in, despite many many tries. She’s crying, I’m crying. A nurse is comforting her…us. Finally the dr comes in and wants to try. He gets it right away. Oh thank you God for that!!

We go to her room…her (our) new home for the next week. (I never leave her) Then a nurse comes to take more blood. Really? More blood? Poor, poor Alyssa!! Then we find out the lab is going to come every 2 hrs to take 2 vials of blood each time. And Alyssas nurse is going to come every 60 minutes to do a finger poke. So Alyssa has an IV in one arm, so they have to take blood from the other arm. The same arm, almost the same spot,every 2 hrs for the next 24 hrs or so. And we thought we didn’t like needles before!! By 4am this routine runs really dry and takes its toll on us. We’ve had almost no sleep and they are poking her all the time. I start grilling the night nurse about how necessary all of these pokes are. This is not my usual quiet polite self. This is a sleep deprived momma bear trying to protect her baby bear. I snap at the lab nurse when she comes back to take blood for the hundredth time when she grabs yet another cottonball and piece of tape and tell her she’s just adding to the torture by putting on the tape and ripping it off 2 hrs later. I offer to hold the cotton ball in place until the bleeding stops. Alyssa thanks me when the nurses leave again.

The week that followed was filled with diabetes boot camp. We learned so much. The nurses were so wonderful and caring. Alyssa counted a total of 36 vials of blood were taken. (not including finger pokes) That a lot for a girl who was afraid of needles! Alyssa learns how to do her injections herself and I learn how to do it, too. Now she does all her own inections and pokes. She helps count cabs. And she takes her 7 injections a day with-out any fuss, plus all of her finger pokes, which she never complains about either. She missed the first few weeks of back to school, but she’s gone back to school and has caught up on all she missed. 2 months have gone by since she was first diagnosed and although they have been stressful for a mom, a family, a patient, they have been workable. I’ve replaced the fear (most of it, at least!) with the power of knowledge and things are going to be ok. Things are different. But they will be ok. Because my daughter is my hero. And if she can do it, I can do it.