ahhh the first post..lol

ok where do you begin? As you can tell by my blog name that this blog is going to be about Diabetes ;O)

Diabetes isn't something new to me I have loved someone with Diabetes all my life but up till a year and a half ago I knew really nothing about Diabetes or the way it can change your life..some for the better if you can believe that.

My older sister has Diabetes, she was 11 years old at the time my parents were told, she is 53 now so you can image how the care was back then compared to today..while living everyday with my sister having Diabetes I never knew what it was or anything about it, my parents tried to make our lives as normal as possible. Sure as a little girl I would come home from school every now and then to be greeted by a big old red fire truck and my sister being taken out of the house on a gurney now and then, or the trips to the hospital to see my sister but even that I was clueless, Diabetes didn't affect my life..I know that sounds bad. Then when I was 14 my mother was diagnoses with Diabetes again being the self centered teen I still had no clue what was going on. I kind of figured things were a bit different since my mom cared for her Diabetes soooooo much different then my sister. My mom took care of her self, tested all the time ( at that time it was still the urine testing) I remember seeing mom take shots, I don't have these memories with my sister, really the only one of needles is my sister chasing me around the house with an empty syringe telling me she was going to give me Diabetes...you know you can do things like that to the little sister ( 6 years apart in age) My sister would eat when and what she wanted no matter what my parents tried to do, my mom ate at a certain time every day, ate certain foods life, sure was different..I know you think why wasn't it that way for my sister? First off it was a long time ago when my parents were still learning and by the time my sister was only 5 years into her diagnoses she was married yep at the tender age of 16 she was married ( don't ask that's a LONG story) so jump up another 7 years and in that short time Diabetes care was changing...nothing like today though!!!! My point is even with both my mom and sister being Diabetic I was still in my own world and didn't have a clue till it hit me right in the face. My daughter Samantha was diagnosed with diabetes in the year 2007 at the age of 8 just 9 days after her 8th birthday..that's when the world of Diabetes came crashing into my world.
Samantha is one of 11 children well at the time of diagnoses she was only one of 10..I was 5 months pregnant at the time with her baby brother. The day was like any other normal day she was outside playing having fun nothing strange. I called her in for dinner she ate then afterwards she told me she didn't feel well. She ran to the bathroom and got sick :O( I thought she was coming down with the flu since two of the kids she was playing with had it, so I didn't think too much about it. The night she throw up a few more times and slept in between. The morning came and the first thing she did was run to the bathroom and throw up again I was a bit worried but still thinking the flu, that was until she came out of the bathroom...the girl was gray in color and looked like she had lost 20 pounds over night. I called the Dr right away and he told me more then likely she was just dehydrated from the flu and to take her to the ER. Trying to get her out to the van was hard she was weak and tired she kept asking me to carry her, I helped her as much as I could being she was a good 50 pounds and I was pregnant. The nurses at the hospital took their time I was going crazy we were there for about 45 mins before someone seen us and when they did they rushed her into a room and TRIED getting an I.V in her, They took her to X-Ray and did blood test it was a good 3 hours later before a Dr came in and told me that she had ketones and her blood sugar was 1200..yikes. I still at the time didnt know how bad it was still thinking ok they do the I.V and she will be fine, I was not thinking that the day before was the last day of our old life. They had to transport her from that hospital to another since the one we were at didnt have a peds i.c.u.
The second I walked into the i.c.u with my daughter ( she was on a stretcher) the Dr looked and me in a clam voice and said your daughter has type 1 Diabetes, at that point you could have knocked me over with a feather., that thought never entered my mind. He told me how lucky she was still alive and that she was very ill :O( . We spent 1 1/2 days in i.c.u then off to a normal room for the next 3 days. Time to pay att and learn how to care for my daughter...I have to say those first few days were the scariest of my life...the first day home I freaked so many times, I wondered how god could entrust her life to me how was I going to learn to give shots, tell when she is having a hypo, know what and how to count carbs...I had so many what ifs going on in my head. Those first few days weeks even are such a blurr. I really think we as parents should start a network to give a hug to all the new parents who have to enter this world of Diabetes, just to let them know we understand and if you need a hug or to talk we are there...yes the Internets has been a great support for me, I have met a lot of wonderful people @ children with diabetes ...THANK YOU!!! they were my life line, but they need to set something up at the Dr offices or something in your area... I was lucky my daughters school hooked me up with another parent from a different school who's 5 year old daughter who had Diabetes she was such a great help for me in the beginning!!!