Well, it's been awhile
Hi there...it's been awhile for sure. We are at the end of the school year and trying to work fast to get some last minute make up work in to make sure Kelly gets to graduate from 8th grade. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem but the last 4 months have been crazy. In February, Kelly was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, it rocked our worlds a bit, but at least we had an answer for the what was going on with him. He'd been sick since after Christmas with one thing or another and his mood, behavior and grades were not good. He was failing EVERYTHING, well except for Social Studies, his ADD med doctor thought his med had just stopped working and set us up to test him again to see if that was the case. Well, turns out we were in the hospital in the pediatric ICU on the day of the testing. One night, I looked at him and noticed he looked thinner, so had him weigh himself and sure enough he was down 7lbs, a few weeks later, when he was doing worse mood and grade wise, I thought he looked thinner again and sure enough he was down another 7lbs, at this point we had an appt for the following Monday (it was Thursday night). The next day he woke and he looked worse, but in the morning it was hard to tell if he really did look thinner or if it was my imagination, so I had him get on the scale and sure enough he'd lost another 7lbs! I took him to school, at first thinking he was going to go (he'd missed so much already)and I wanted to weigh him on the school scale but he went downhill while we were waiting in the car to go into school, could hardly hold is head up, was one word replying to my questions and when I walked into school with him, he was staggering slightly!!! The nurse confirmed the weight loss was indeed another 7lbs over night and agreed with me that he needed to be seen that day. So off we went to his pediatrician and the first thing they checked at the doctors office was his blood sugar, it was 287(normal 70-150) and that's when they hit us with news we never ever expected to hear...Kelly has diabetes(No one in either of our families has it)! Poor Kelly, he was so upset and it didn't help that he was so so ill at this point that it made him even more emotional. :( So they sent us off to pick up my husband and go directly to Texas Children's where by the time we made it there, his blood sugar had gone from 287 to 800...super super horribly high! Thank God I never let him nap, thank God, I didn't just let him keep sleeping that morning instead of waking him up for school, it could have been a very different outcome for Kelly. His A1C which basically is your bloods memory was 11.6 which means that Kelly's blood sugar was on average 289 to 330 every day for about 3 months prior to diagnosis...all the mood, failing grades and behavior made sense now...it wasn't his ADD med and it wasn't being an angsty teenager, it was uncontrolled diabetes. So, it's a lot to deal with, he is insulin dependent for the rest of his life. At the moment, he checks his blood sugar 5 times a day at minimum and gives himself 5 insulin shots a day. Poor guy, but he is a trooper and is doing great! That said, from January to about a month or two past diagnosis he missed a lot of school or missed classes being in the nurses office dealing with low blood sugars, so lots of missed work and now we are trying maniacally to get it turned in so he can graduate. Fun times! That's the news, the past few months since his diagnosis have been a crazy roller coaster ride, but we are managing and we know how blessed we are that Kelly is still with us on the ride.