Confirmation

My fears where confirmed in the doctor's office Thursday morning. Ty has type 1 diabetes. I cried. I tried to be strong. I tried to hold back the tears, but I cried anyway. I already knew what they told me, I knew it Wednesday night, I knew it in my gut.

How did I know? He was peeing all the time..ALL the time and he was always thirsty. The biggest indication was at night. He started wetting the bed. At first it was only once in a while and I attributed it to him being in school and just being too tired to wake up. Then it started happening more often about 2-3 times a week but this was around the holidays when he was eating treats, playing with cousins, and staying up late. When school started again in January, I tried restricting his drinks at night and waking him up at night to use the bathroom, he was still having accidents. I began to question him how much he was drinking at school and how often he was using the bathroom. He told me he gets a milk with lunch and drinks out of the water fountain when he gets the chance, and that he uses the bathroom 5, 6, some days it was 10 times a day at school. Knowing the obvious correlation between frequent urination/thirst and diabetes, I instantly googled and look for all the "other" signs for diabetes. He didn't have any of the other symptoms, I continued to watch him. About 2 weeks ago I bought some ketone urine strips at the store to test his ketone level. His first test came back which trace amounts and the second test came back with negative levels, which are all with-in a normal range. Relieved that he didn't have diabetes, I backed off a bit on my concern and started wondering if he had an infection of sorts, but he had no painful urination or burning.(TMI??). I put it on my "to-do" list to schedule him a doctors appointment. On Monday and Tuesday this week I began to notice he was using the bathroom even more frequently. At this point we where putting him in pull-ups at night because the bed wetting was happening every night.But on Monday and Tuesday nights I stayed up late and noticed he was actually waking up to go the bathroom at least 3-4 times a night and still soaked the bed and sheets with urine (wearing a pull-up). Jeff and I were doing a lot of talk and I decided that I would start measuring how much he was actually peeing verses how much he was drinking (I'm the type that when I brought him to the doctor, I wanted him to know how serious the situation was...not just a "the kid is stressed and just wetting the bed, he'll get over it" ). Wednesday night we all loaded up in the car to take me to an urgent care clinic (I've got an ear infection). About every 20-30 minutes Ty had to go the bathroom and kept saying how thirsty he was..which being buckled in the car was eye opening to see just how frequent it had gotten..at home he didn't announce it, he just goes. That night I stayed up until 1am googling just tyring to find an idea or answers to all of this. I felt my gut telling me to do the ketone urine test on him again. I woke him up in the middle of the night and this time his urine had large amounts of ketones. I did the test on him 3 times through the night each time it instantly changed colors and showed large amounts of ketones in his urine. And that is how I knew he had diabetes. He blood sugar had finally gotten so high that ketones were spilling out in his urine.  Jeff was still awake so I told him the news. It's at that point I posted the previous blog. We pulled Ty out of his bed and let him sleep in between us that night. I think I stayed up until 3-4 that night just worrying, crying, and praying I was overreacting. Jeff held Ty while he and I prayed over him, and then Jeff began to cry, and cry and cry. I've never seen him cry like that. Ty woke up and asked why Jeff was crying (we both thought he was asleep...later the next day on our way to the ER Ty asked again why daddy was crying in the night, saying he had never seen daddy cry..it was just a sweet moment to explain to Ty that his daddy loves him so much that it makes daddy sad for all the hard things that he is going to have to go through). As soon as I woke up, I scheduled and appointment with his Pediatrician's office (I didn't get his Pediatrician but one of his partners...a women who was sweet and understanding. )
At this point it was 7:40 on Thursday morning and the appointment was for 8:20. I rushed to get the girls breakfast and dressed and took them to my sisters and met Ty and Jeff at the doctors.
They gave him a urine test and the results came back instantly and so high that the lab tech actually walked to the door to interrupt the doctor to give her the results ASAP. She immediately sent us for a finger prick to measure his blood sugar, once again the lab tech came shortly after with the abnormal results. At this point his blood sugar was in the 500s (normal is 80-120). The doctor didn't even say anything to me she just looked at me closed her eyes and slightly nodded her head (not saying "diabetes" b/c she wasn't sure of how we wanted to handle it with Ty). I couldn't hold back anymore more tears and they just began to stream down my face. Ty was confused and acting nervous. At this point they told us to go home, pack our bags then head to the ER because we would be staying several days at the Children's Hospital. That's when Ty started crying. He cried a lot the first day, mainly because he was poked and stuck with needles all day.

Thursday was a HARD day, we both cried a lot.