Twenty years ago this week our son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. It was a time of transition for our family as we had just moved to Wellsville, Kansas to serve two great churches and to get closer to our parents. It was time for the kids yearly physicals for the new school year. I’d made the appointment with a new pediatrician back in June and it took eight weeks to get into the clinic. Sarah had her physical and everything checkout as a normal eight year old. Three year old Sean was an active kid and curious about everything. He’d been potty trained for a year but during our move he had regressed to needing helping and having accidents all the time. We thought the issue would resolve itself as we became settled into our new home.
Sean was getting acquainted with his new physician, Dr. Monzon, and had climbed into the doctor’s lap to get closer to the guy with the cool toys on his stethoscope. Sean had another accident, on the doctor’s lap, and Dr. Monzon just laughed. Here’s the moment when life stood still, “Let’s check Sean’s blood sugar.” I remember thinking that my Grandad had to check his blood sugar because he couldn’t eat anything sweet. The nurse came into the room and took Sean down to the lab. I can’t remember if I went with him or not. I still had Sarah with me and so I think I was distracted from what was happening with Sean.

As I recall, the Doctor came back with Sean and sat down on his rolling stool, he grabbed my hands and looked me in the eye. He said, “Sean has a blood sugar of 600. He needs to go to the hospital immediately.” I’m a long-time health advocate and a Mom so I knew the next question to ask, “The test must be wrong. Let’s run it again.” The rest of the conversation is lost to me but the impact was a gut punch to my carefully constructed world. We spent the next five days in Children’s Mercy Hospital. We learned about counting carbohydrates, the differences in types of insulin, how to test a blood sugar on a glucometer and how long 60 seconds could be to a hungry three-year-old waiting for his lunch and he waited for the meter to count down to his blood sugar reading.

We learned how to draw up insulin into a syringe and the very worst part, how to inject it into our son’s little body. My husband and I had to practice giving injections on each other before we could leave the hospital. We left the hospital on the day of our 10th wedding anniversary. We originally planned to have a night out with a movie and a dinner. We ended up stopping at Border’s Books and buying a book called, Calorie King which had the nutritional values of every food and restaurant known to humanity.

In tomorrow’s blog I’ll take share about the early days with diabetes, reflect on the promises made by the medical professionals which offered us hope and give an update on Sean.