When it rains......

Shannon is 10 and in 5th grade, and, just 4 months after Tristan's diagnosis, she has also developed type 1 diabetes.

She was complaining last week of just not feeling very well. She came home from school early on Wednesday and didn't go on Thursday, but felt better so she went on Friday. Saturday afternoon, she volunteered to take a nap. As in "I think I'll go take a nap." She'd done this several times over the last few days, and I honestly chalked it up to one of the myriad of viruses that are floating around right now.

But, she was drinking an awful lot. And she was complaining that her legs hurt for no apparent reason. And, by the by, she'd lost 3 lbs over the week. So, on a whim, we tested her blood sugar. The meter simply read "HI," which means it's over 700 (normal is right around 100, but no higher than 180).

Uh, what?!

So we checked her for blood keytones and they were in the "have her evaluated" borderline range. We schlepped the other two over to the neighbor's and took Shannon to Primary Children's ER. They got to us pretty quickly and told us that there really was no other explanation for a sugar that high. They gave her some IV fluids, but the child WALKED up to her room. That seems so odd to me, that a child with an illness requiring an ER trip and hospitalization is walking to her room.

She wasn't nearly as sick as Tristan was because we caught it before it got too bad. She's in good spirits, eating and drinking and loving that she can order ANYTHING she wants off the menu. She's joking with us and with the nurses and watching movies in between her "classes," and loving that too.

So we're learning her ratios and dosages and all of that. And she's learning how to test her sugar and give herself insulin injections. So far, she hasn't pricked her finger or done the actual shot, but she's done everything else. They won't let her leave the hospital until she's doing this herself, or at least has done it once or twice. She really, really, REALLY wants to come home tomorrow, so I think she'll get it.

In the meantime, Bruce was supposed to fly out on a business trip today. Clearly he's not going, and his coworkers have been AMAZING about it. Someone else is leaving early tomorrow morning, with less than 24 hours notice. Another coworker, whom I've never met, brought Shannon an adorable floppy sheep dog stuffed animal (his name is now "Rover").

I don't really know what else to say. There is a genetic component to all of this, leaving a person with a predisposition for this because it's an autoimmune disorder. The cells in her pancreas that make insulin are dying and will eventually all die off. In general, the chances of a person developing Type 1 Diabetes if a sibling has it are 10%, so her chances of not having it were 90%. Only now, it's 100%. Statistics don't mean much, do they?