My 2 year old son was just diagnosed as diabetic

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We have twins. D and D2 (both their names begin with D…)

Last week both boys for sick. They seemed to get over it ok. Starting about Thursday D started showing signs of being sick again. Tired, cranky, not eating much. Yesterday he got worse and was wanting to drink all the time and peeing huge amounts

This morning we took him to the pediatrician and they did a blood test, then went us straight to the hospital.

D is type 1 diabetic. He is in the hospital and my wife is staying with him.D2 and I are at home. D2 spent the day with his grandparents and aunt while Mom was at the hospital and I went to the ‘this is how you keep your son alive’ class. Mom will get that class as well.

They expect D to come home Wednesday.

Not very happy right now. D is a sweet, sweet boy. I know that we can manage this, and the doc said some new treatments are coming out in the next two years that will be really good.

But it sucks.

Last year my wife’s oldest son, from her first marriage, committed suicide. So you can imagine how this is hitting her.

We have had a bunch of train wrecks in our lives recently, and none of them have been our fault. This is the latest major problem that we didn’t cause and cannot fix.

I know that, once we get the new routine down, D will be fine. However, fuck. I am really tired of all the negative shit that is happening that we cannot control.

And poor D. He is such a sweet little boy. And a tit man at two*.

Alex

*D really likes sticking his hand down my wife shirt. Or any woman’s shirt. He really, really likes boobs. I mean ALOT.

2

I’m so sorry your little guy got sick. I hope his treatment keeps him stabilized and in good health. It’s great to hear that new treatment options are coming along, best wishes to your son.

3

Sorry for your troubles and hope he’s feeling better soon. Hopefully he’s young enough that the prescribed lifestyle changes just become normal stuff for him without too much adjustment. All the best.

4

Hugs to all of you. This stinks.

5

So sad. Sorry for y’all. I am type 1 from a very young age. I was giving myself insulin shots at 8yo. He will be alright wth it, just get the routine down, and you will soon adjust.
Has D2 been checked?

6

Are they identical or fraternal?

7

I’m so sorry. What a big adjustment for you all. Wishing you the best of outcomes.

8

I’m sorry for the news, I know it hits you hard when your kiddo is sick.

Now, here’s the good news: your kiddo still has an excellent chance of leading a fairly normal life. My brother-in-law has two sons, both of whom were diagnosed with juvenile diabetes (the oldest when he was around 2, like yours). They just left yesterday, in fact; they passed through town and stayed a few days. The oldest, Mike, is a senior in high school and plays football. David is 12 and a fitness fanatic. Neither one shows any sign, to me anyway, that they’re missing out on anything.

When they came by, they brought their dogs. The boys each have a service dog that alerts when their blood sugar is dropping or spiking. It’s helped a lot with keeping them on track. Also, every year, they both go to Camp Sweeney, which is like a summer camp just for kids with diabetes, and they’ve never had to pay for it. The camp looks like it’s really fun; the kids meet other kids from all over the country, they learn how to manage their diabetes, and the camp does livestreams of lots of their events.

This is not an ending, it’s a beginning, an opportunity to learn and plan and plug in. Get in contact with whatever groups you can find (JDRF would be a good start) and throw yourself into this new world for your son. It’s all going to be fine.

9

Another T1 diabetic here. You sound like you’re handling it fine - I see a lot of parents treat it as if it’s much worse of a diagnosis than it really is. It is a hassle of a disease, and a pain the ass, and can feel overwhelming… but at the end of the day, it’s manageable and your little boy will have a great life.

I was diagnosed late in life. I was 38, and it was scary and upsetting and depressing. Now, close to 10 years later, I can tell you the overall change in my life is minor. Maybe 10% different, and that 10% is mostly stuff that is better for me overall (I eat better, more consistent with exercise, etc).

The technologies available nowadays around diabetes care are great, and as your doc said, more are coming out all the time.

10

D2 will be checked.

I wrote a reply last night but apparently either didn’t hit send or hamsters ate it.

The boys are fraternal. We had to do IVF to have them. I could have sworn the genetic testing covered diabetes but will have to check the paper work.

We have had a bunch of drama in the past couple years, none of which has been our fault. My wife’s son committed suicide a little over a year ago so you can imagine how hard this is hitting her.

We will get through this and Dirk will be ok. I am just getting tired of having giant life altering bombs dropped on us. Every time I start thinking that all is well the universe drops a giant shit into the middle of our lives. Every time I get happy because our debt is almost gone another financial bomb gets dropped, once again these are not under our control. We have good insurance but it is gonna cost quite a bit.

Gonna stop before I start feeling really sorry for myself. Doesn’t help and, in the big scheme of things, we are doing ok.

Gotta remember all we can do is control what we can control and we just have to deal with the rest.

Slee

11

Very sorry to hear this; best wishes to your family.

12

Aw man, slee, so sorry.

13

I’m sorry about this news. The fact that he’s being diagnosed so young also means he will grow up and it will all be completely natural to him. He will learn at a young age how to care for himself and manage the disease. You and your wife need to get some rest, the stress the past few days must be exhausting.

14

An update.

His blood sugar is slowly coming down but he will be in the hospital for another day or two.

The docs will be doing a MRI on his brain (or cat scan, I am a bit scattered right now) to check for damage. D isn’t talking much, he screams when he is upset. His balance is off according to the docs but Dirk has always walked on his toes (which we have been working on for a while) and when I saw him yesterday he was walking normally for him and his balance seemed ok.

My wife went on the war path with the pediatrician office. The doc who has been seeing us downplayed getting a bloodtest. I pushed on it pretty hard and neither of us are happy about that. With the symptoms he was showing they should have immediately thought diabetes.

I am alternating between shitting my pants scared and talking myself down to 'D will be fine.

It doesn’t help that my wife and I are in two different places. I have been taking D2 home while my wife stays at the hospital. D2 is too young to hang out long in the hospital, he wants to run and play. The playroom works for a bit but then he gets bored…

They also want D in speech therapy, which we will do but I know the costs through my insurance and that is going to hurt. Bad.

But D is ok today. D2 is ok. Things will get better.

Slee

15

Figured I’d give an update.

D came home on Friday night. So far, it is going ok. We are getting the meal stuff down and the shots are going ok though I feel so bad for D. Poor little guy doesn’t understand why he keeps getting poked all the time. Otherwise he is getting back to being his old self. I love that kid.

My wife is doing ok, an occasional emotional wave hits but not as bad as the first day or two. I am ok, no longer freaking out.

The doc is having us tweak the shots a bit. It appears it will take a bit to dial in the best ratios.

It looks like D might get an insulin pump, the doc was talking about it. We have an appointment on the 14th, we will find out more then.

We have to check Ds blood sugar at 2 am. My wife generally handles this as I have to work in the morning. Not that taking care of our twins isn’t work, it is. However I can’t take a nap with the boys during the day so she gets the 2 am test even though I wake up as well.

Well, last night the insulin pin jammed. Lots of drama (not bad drama, just more of a ‘Holy shit, what do we do?’ kinda thing), almost a trip to the hospital until we realized we had an additional pen*. This is the second time the pen jammed, first time was in the hospital. Gotta ask the doc about that.

I talked to the H.R. folks about the hospital stay. Looks like we will be on the hook for 7,250. Not sure where I am going to find that but as long as D is ok, we will deal with it.

Slee

16

I don’t have any expert advice to share but I just wanted to say I hope you are all hanging in there. It’s so difficult to have to cope when one’s children are facing health concerns. I hope you and your wife are taking good care of yourselves as well as caring for the little ones.

17

What an unwelcome adventure :(.

Yes, you’ll all learn to deal with it and it’ll become second nature.

Re the speech therapy: contact Early Intervention. It’s a Federally-mandated program that offers services from birth to age 3, to address all kinds of developmental issues including speech. As I recall (this was 20 years ago for us), you’re charged but there’s a sliding scale based on income.

There are also special education programs through your local school district (I believe also Federally-mandated); those services are free. I seem to recall they start at age 2 or so but I could be misremembering; I know that EI has a much shorter timeframe between referral and when the evaluation must be done - I think it may be 45 days versus 3-4 months for the school programs. I know that my son was about 2 years and 8 months when we realized he had issues; we went through EI for those 4 months simply because we could get him services faster (while the school district bureaucracy churned).

18

Get yourself some cheap syringes to use when/if the pen messes up. Though truly, I’m curious what kind of pen you have - I used one for a fair bit of time, never had jams.

If you’re a facebooker, there are a TON of diabetes forums out there where you can connect with other parents of D1 kids. Lots of good info out there, and also a place to vent around folks going through the same challenges.

Look into continuous glucose monitors as well as pumps. There’s a few out there, but Dexcom is the one I use. It’s approved for toddlers older than 2, and it’ll let you track his glucose all the time. Highly recommended.

19

Wow, I’m so sorry for D.
I’m glad you have insurance and access to quality medical care.

20

Thanks everybody.

We are doing ok. Getting the new routine down. D is getting better about the pricks and shots. Still gets upset but it doesn’t last long.

We have an appointment with the state early intervention folks. I am not all that worried about the boys and the speech thing. They both fully understand, they just aren’t talking much. Though D hasn’t been talking less since the hospital stay. Heck, both of them do puzzles, can pick up items when asked for them (the latest bath time game is I ask for letters and they hand me the correct foam letter from the tub. They are both awesome at it.), understand what we say and let us know non-verbally what they want. They just don’t talk much. I am convinced part of it is that we are too on top of things. They get everything they need right away. And if you get what you want without asking for it, why bother talking?

Slee