I've been pondering about that day.....

It's not often that I think about the day I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, or the events that followed afterward.  It was just another day, in the life of somebody.

But, since Sunday, when I wrote the original post about how the day of my diagnosis went  - I have had random thoughts just come out of nowhere.  I guess by writing about my experience, I have sort of processed it more emotionally.  I usually have always just taken it for what it was.  I became a person with Diabetes.  But that day was more than that.  I became a child with adult responsibilities, very quickly.

Looking back, I remember everything pretty clearly.  I didn't get to go home the day the blood work came back.  My hospital stay was going to be indefinite.  Being that I was from a small town, even the doctor on call  at the time wasn't that familiar with Diabetes.  My mother had to arrange to get my clothes brought to the hospital as this was going to be my new home for a while.

At the time of my diagnosis, I was 10 years of age, and I weighed 66 pounds.  I remember the doctor saying that I was 19 pounds underweight.  I had a thing called ketones spilling into my urine.  At the time, I had no idea what ketones were.  But, with everything that came with learning about Diabetes, I soon learned that ketones weren't a good thing.  The goal was to have nothing show up on that urine test strip.  Ketones are the waste product that is spilled into the urine when your body doesn't have enough energy and starts to burn fat in your body for that energy.  It's not a good thing to have fat burning like this because your body thinks it's in a starvation state.  Your body needs glucose to function, and insulin is the key to allowing glucose into your cells to give you energy.  Without that key (insulin) into your cells, the glucose just piles up in the blood stream, resulting in high blood sugar.  And without the glucose reaching your cells, the body must find another source of energy to support itself, so it burns fat for that energy, causing the waste product of ketones to occur.

I hope that made sense.  In other words, too many ketones result in ketoacidosis,  which is a life-threatening condition.  So, I am thankful I was diagnosed when I was, or it could have gotten a lot more serious.

The next  17 days were spent in hospital.  I spent the first 7 days in the one hospital I was diagnosed in, and the following 10 days were spent at the hospital I was transferred to.  This hospital was more equipped with a Diabetes education centre and such to help get my Diabetes under control.  I think my stay could have gone on for a few more days had I not begged the intern doctor to allow me to be discharged before my 11th birthday the next day.  I was so excited to leave and go home.

And then my 'new' life began....

There are my few bits and pieces about that for today.  It's just past midnight now, and I must get some rest.

Good Night :)
One day at a time....
Cindy