A Health Scare for Me

After spending the last 6 weeks obsessing over my son's health, it occured to me that I have completely fallen off the wagon for myself. I am not blaming him, it is rather that his diabetes turned into another excuse not to excercise, watch my blood pressure, and generally deal with my own health.

I do have high blood sugar. It was high last year and I went on some medications and spend much of the fall and into January doing a moderate workout program that was having some effect. My blood pressure had dropped to around 145 over 90, still high, but it had tracked down significantly over a year ago.

So last night, I am lying in bed thinking... I feel like crap. It suddenly occurred to me, this was the way I was feeling last year. I have been mostly taking my medication, but not reliably, probably forgetting it nearly half the time. I have not been working, out. And I have been, to say the least, rather stressed out.

My blood pressure last night was around 170 over 105. Wow, stage two hypertension.

I am very disappointed with myself.  I can't believe that I was so selfish to let myself go like that. My son having diabetes is no excuse to let myself die, or worse, have a stroke or a heart attack by being lazy.

So, my new resolution, take care of myself again. I renewed my medication prescriptions, and I will work out tonight, and at least 3 times a week from now on. I will do it for him, if not for myself.

The First Low

The Inevitable
So the inevitable event that we have been dreading happened, my son had his first low. The cause was pretty simple once we thought it out. For dinner he had some mushroom soup. The can had nutritional information printed on the side which we used to calculate his bolus injection. The problem was simple, the information was for 'condensed soup', not for cooked soup which would have twice the volume. We did our calculations for about 25g too much carb and so gave him 2 units of insulin too much.

He has a correction factor of 3 units of insulin per 1 mmol/l. So these two units could push him about 6 mmol/l lower than he should be. His target is between 4 and 8 mmol/l. Not surprisingly he crashed.

We knew this was coming, it was only a matter of time. He was sitting watching TV and said that he wasn't feeling well. His hands were shaking a bit. We checked his blood sugar level and it read 3.1 mmol/l. This was our first low.

What to do?
We were theoretically ready for this but you can never be truly ready for something like this the first time. First thing we did was got him a juice box. We had him drain it. After waiting 15 minutes we took another reading... the result was 3.2.

I went back downstairs and thought that maple syrop might be better. Measuring out enough for 15g of carbs, I added some warm water and stirred it until dissolved. He guzzled that quickly.

We waited another 15 minutes, the result 5.1. mmol/l. He was no longer low. An hour later he was around 10 :(, he was now high.

Not wanting to mess around too much we proceeded to monitor him for a few more hours testing him into the night. He went up to 11, and then slowly started to drop to near normal come morning. He had a headache, and wasn't feeling well, but we still sent him to school (driving him). By the end of the day he was back to normal.

One Mistake
One little mistake due to a stupid serving size on a label led to 24 hours of chaos. Diabetes is not like most other treatments, where you work with the body's equilibrium mechanism. With diabetes you are  the equilibrium mechanism. Too little insulin and he gets sick. Too much insulin and he gets sick.

And nothing is really predictable. A honeymoon period could throw us off, some exercise or stress can throw us off, and of course, badly reading a nutrition label can throw us off.

What Polite Society Thinks of My Son

There is a well read columnist called Miss Manners. The whole point of the column is to inform people about etiquette. You know the stuff, when to write thank-you notes, who to invite to parties, etc. Manners ARE important. We are all stuck on this planet together and manners helps each of us avoid needlessly inconveniencing or hurting each other physically or emmotionally.

In her latest post she decided to give advice to a businessman who was wondering about etiquette doing blood tests on an airplane. This was her response...

...Miss Manners draws the line at drawing blood. Restrooms exist to provide a proper location for such necessary activities when away from home, and those who use them have no business monitoring the respectable, if sometimes unaesthetic, activities of others...

Obviously the Diabetes Online Community (DOC) is in an uproar. But the fact remains... if you want to be considered polite... you have to go to a germ filled washroom a whole bunch of times on your flight and poke holes in yourself because doing anything else will make old ladies, children, busybodies and other people think about diabetes for a second. That is so impolite.

My son is going to have to deal with these shits for the rest of his life. There will always be ill-informed idiots judging my son for doing what he has to do to stay alive.

That sucks...

In my book, it is bad manners to object to someone doing something that they need to do to stay alive and Miss Manners should change the name of her column to Miss Snootyface. But lets face it, we are a minority.

The Very Least I Could Do

One thing I hear about in lots of diabetes blogs from parents is 'If I could take the diabetes away and give it to myself, I would' and similar sentiments. I know that I would feel the same way in many ways. But it is such a cop-out. Up there with a husband offering to get pregnant instead of the wife. I might as well say 'If only I could fly to Mars, find an ancient civilization with a cure, and come back', I would or some other ridiculous scenario. The reality is that my kid is alone in this. I can not do anything to cure him. No matter what I say, when everyone in the family gets together and eats, he is the one who has to have a shot first, and count the carbs, not anyone else.

But let's say I am sincere in my offer. Sure it is impossible, but there are other sacrifices I could do right? Right???

This morning when he awoke he said his stomach hurt. I checked his blood sugar and, although high, we have been coming down. When I had the call with the endocrinologist, I said he was having a pain in his stomach. The doctor said that unless he threw up he should be okay, just watch him. So that is what my wife and I did. I went off to work, she worked from home, and we complained about how this was making our lives difficult.

Tomorrow, I told him, he is going back to school. I am not going to let him miss more school then he absolutely has to. It is too hard on our family finances for me to miss work, and the chaos from my wife's career is also too much to bear. So we are going to force him back to school tomorrow, unless he throws up.

Nice parents eh?

Sure, we talk a good game about loving him and sharing the disease with him, but when it matters he is still alone.

Saying that I would take the disease away from him is actually the VERY least I could have possible done

Is it a Dream

For the last few years I would occasionally have the same dream. The specifics were usually different but the theme was the same. Something bad would happen, I would be dealing with it poorly, and then I would wake up. Perhaps my car would crash, or my house would burn down, something like that. The thing was even when dreaming I would wonder if it was a dream, and it would turn out not to be for a while, until I would suddenly wake up.

When my son was diagnosed with T1 diabetes, I kept on having those thoughts. Is this just a dream? Am I going to wake up? Please can I wake up?

After more than a week, I stopped having those thoughts. The nightmare is real. Excuse me while I go punch more holes in my kid.

Failing as a Father

This winter has been brutally harsh, which is bad for everything except one, the skiing has been fantastic. Earlier in January after a bunch of snow I looked at the weather forecast. It was going to be raining on the weekend :(. So what did I do, I yanked my son out of school for the day and we went skiing. A wonderful day, but it seemed to really tire him out. After about 6 hours of skiing he was done. I was a little disappointed that he didn't want to ski a bunch more, but we had a great day so we just went home.

A couple of weeks after that was the weekend of a Scout Camp. He and the rest of the scout troop was going camping in the winter. I drove through a hellish snow storm Friday night to get him and his friends to camp. It was wonderful in the camp however, I was sure he was going to have a great time. Instead we got a phone call from the leader, he wasn't feeling well and was refusing to participate. Again I drove through horrible snow to get there, to find him acting lazy and spoiling the enjoyment others were having with his down attitude. I did not hide my disappointment in him and when we got home, I made him shovel the driveway alone. The next day we went skiing (the first of four weekly lessons), after about four hours he was exhausted and we went home.

The following week was another ski lesson day. We packed up, went skiing, I bought a four hour pass. After his lesson he went into the chalet. Through some miscommunication I couldn't find him. I spent an hour searching for him, including driving home and back, trying to figure out where he was. I found him head down in the chalet refusing to go skiing again. Again, my disappointment was not hidden. I was more than a little mad at him.

Why was my son refusing to participate in activities. No matter how much I tried to give him fun things to do, he was determined to act tired and refuse to have fun.

The following weekend we were in the hospital, and learning that through all that time his body was unable to process sugar, he was effectively starving. His body was turning his blood into acid and other horrible things were happening. He was dying as I was yelling at him. It was not his fault, I should have seen what was wrong with him.

Someday I will make it up to my son. But for now I have to hurt him over and over again giving him shots and taking blood tests.

I am a failure as a father. My son deserves better.

I am so sorry.

1:30 AM Phone Call

I am starting this blog almost exactly one week after the worst phone call of my life. My 11-year old son was suffering from an unquenchable thirst, stomach pains, headachs, weight loss and a lack of energy. After battling with my doctor's receptionist for a week ('We don't see people for stomach flu') I finally had him in to see the doctor last thursday. He ordered some blood tests. At 1:30 in the morning my phone rang, the on-call doctor saw the results, my son's blood sugar was 23... go to emergency NOW.
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In an instant my whole family's world was changed.
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The next 64 hours in the hospital were mostly a blur. My son was a pincushion for the nurses. Blood tests every few hours, EKG tests, more blood tests and an IV pumping painful potassium into his veins to prevent a heart attack. My wife and I spent the days with him and took alternating nights sleeping on the couch in his room while the other spouse went home to cry and take care of our three-year-old daughter. I don't know what we would have done without the support of friends watching our little princess.
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I am writing this blog to sort of calm myself down. Screaming at the world does not work. Bargaining with the world does not work. All I can do is explain to myself that I can get through this in one piece. I have no illusions, this is going to be hard work for everyone. My marriage is going to be stressed, my son is going to have to grow up and live with a chronic potentially crushing disease for the rest of his life. Even my daughter is going to have to cope with effectively becoming the older, easier to care for child.
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I know that things will get better. I also know that things will also get worse. Life is a journey, and parenting is not a job for wimps.