Articles About Diabetes: There are articles all over the place on both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. The first place to look is on the web (online), pamphlets from your doctor, pamphlets from your dietician, Mayo articles, online websites written by people who have had diabetes (either type 1 or type 2) and have written about it, even books at your local library. On those books, though, make sure they are current books because the treatment of diabetes is constantly changing, so you don’t want to be reading an old book with outdated information.
I stay connected on a weekly basis with diabeticlive.com. Over the years, they have given me lots of new information. I’ve also checked in with the American Diabetes Foundation and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation on a regular basis.
I try to stay current on any new information on type 1 diabetes, and the only way I can find that current information is from my daily newspaper, CNN, the evening news with Brian Williams, or through the internet. I get most of my new information from the internet.
See, I have a real need to want information as fast as I can. My daughter has type 1 diabetes, diagnosed three years ago. She was only four years old when she was diagnosed. I want a cure for type 1 diabetes. Yes, I want a cure for type 2 diabetes, too, but my main concern is about type 1 diabetes.
We’ve had a hard time making the adjustment in our lives, an adjustment that is necessary for Isabella to survive, after she received her diagnosis. Her initial symptoms were subtle, but noticeable. She was thirsty all the time, even in the middle of the night. She was starving, I mean really starving, and also in the middle of the night. She wet the bed a couple of times, even though she had been potty trained for over a year. And she seemed thin. Once Candy, my wife, weighed her, we saw that she had lost a few pounds. A few pounds to a four year old child is a lot of weight. And with her ravenous appetite, it didn’t make sense.
My wife and I went to the pediatrician together when we took Isabella in. We were real nervous, really nervous, because our guts told us something was wrong. And we were right. The pediatrician did a blood glucose test right there in his office, and Isabella’s blood glucose level was 289. We were sent immediately to the admission’s office at our local hospital for her to be admitted. My wife and I sat there exchanging glances with one another, but neither of us shed a tear because we didn’t want to scare Isabella. Candy had to go to the bathroom a few times for a private moment and she came back with red eyes, so I knew she had been crying. I even made a few trips myself. But we didn’t want to cry in front of Isabella. We wanted her to be as comfortable as possible, as calm as possible, until the bad stuff came. And we knew bad stuff was coming in the form of more in depth blood tests. The little finger prick she had had in her pediatrician’s office was bad enough.
Well, she was admitted to the hospital. She stayed for four days. She was too young for the insulin pump at that time, so they taught Candy and I how to do injections on her (practiced a lot on an orange to get the hang of doing an injection as painlessly as possible), how to do the finger prick for the blood sugar testing and then how to work the glucose monitor. Then, we had to learn about foods. Proteins, carbohydrates, fats; the way foods were prepared; the amount of calories in those foods; the glycemic index of the foods she ate. So much information to learn in four days. And we are still learning.
Glycemic index threw us for a loop. Didn’t know that a potato could be as bad as a cup of ice cream in sugar content, but a potato is processed a little differently in the body than a cup of ice cream so isn’t as bad for you. But a potato is a carb, is a carb, is a carb. We found out that anything you eat affects your blood sugar level when your pancreas has stopped producing insulin. But, you have to feed the body and you have to have the insulin in order for that food to be accepted into your body to feed it the correct way.
They even checked the cholesterol level on a little four year old girl. They checked her eyes. The checked her blood pressure. All those things are affected when you have diabetes.
Exercise. Well, Isabella was four years old and we didn’t have a problem at all with the amount of exercise she received. This little girl was a dynamite energy ball and always ran instead of walking. We had the exercise thing covered, but we had to incorporate the exercise into her daily routine of insulin intake and food intake. A dicey little tightrope to walk when a child is so young.
But, we did it. We are continuing to do it. She is in school now and is having no problems. We have her A1c levels checked every three months to see how well we are controlling it.
Our goal now is to give as much responsibility to Isabella as possible on a gradual basis. She has begun doing her own injections, and they don’t seem to hurt her as much as when we did thm. She’s real good about avoiding concentrated sugars, even at birthday parties, because we call those foods “tabby-boo” foods, a term we came up with when she was younger. In a few months, this summer in fact, they are going to put her on an insulin pump. She shows maturity for her age, and the doctors think she will be able to handle it just fine, especially since she has mastered the checking of her blood glucose levels on her glucose monitor. We are really proud of her. That’s a lot of responsibility to handle for a child that young, but she’s doing it. As well, we’ve noticed that she has shown maturity in other areas of her life since she has become so disciplined about taking care of her diabetes.
It’s no longer called the “sugar.” That’s what the older generation called it. It’s no longer called juvenile diabetes mellitus. It’s called type 1 diabetes.
During this process, we have learned about the complications that can arise with the many years that you have type 1 diabetes and how tight control can ward off those complications for years, if you take care of the condition to the best of your ability.
No getting around it, Isabella has a chronic disease that will be with her the rest of her life, or until they find a cure. I pray for a cure each and every day.
And type 2 diabetes is creeping up in number of younger children because of lack of exercise and over-eating. Get those kids outside for exercise and take those fatty treats away from them. The same complications that Isabella might be facing down the road could crop up in your children, even though all they have to do is take a pill to control their diabetes. Get them off to a healthy start now.
As I said before, reading articles about diabetes will give you a head start. These articles, especially the newer information, keep you up to date and what is going on out there, the new research that is being done, and it gives you a sense of hope. Maybe they will have a pancreas transplant available for our kids just around the corner. Right now, all we can do is treat the condition, we can’t fix it and make it go away in type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes is expensive, whether it be type 1 or type 2. We go through a lot of glucose strips when Isabella uses her blood glucose monitor. Thank goodness, I have a good health insurance policy with the company I work for, but we still pay out a lot in co-pays. If Isabella gets a cold, it hits her harder than a child who doesn’t have diabetes. That’s a doctor’s visit. Every three months, we get the A1C blood test to see how we’ve been controlling the blood sugar levels for the past three months. That’s another doctor visit and another lab bill that we have to come up with the co-pay for. And when Isabella gets sick, her blood sugar levels tend to go up, so there’s even more blood testing done.
So much involved in taking care of this chronic disease, but it can be done. We are living proof that it can be done. We do it every day. OR, Isabella does it every day. We are supervisors now, not the doers. This little girl is taking over and doing a bang-up job of it.
We are so very proud of her. We love her so much. We are so lucky to have her.
Just read all your info that you can get your hands on. It will help you deal with the new news that you’ve received, or help you cope with the old news that you’ve had for quite a while. Information gives you a sense of power, a sense of control.
Here is a great article on cake recipe for diabetics.
Good luck. You’re going to be fine.