After three fun filled days at our local children’s hospital, we were finally on our way home! We were all packed up, and with the nurses help, we found a wheelchair to place our large group of bags to carry downstairs to our car.
Walking out the door, we stopped by to have a visit with Mr. Ronald McDonald parked right in front of the Ronald McDonald House next door to the hospital for a quick photo op. This visit was probably the highlight of our visit to the hospital, but we didn’t stay long because we both wanted to get home and take bathes. We were both fairly ripe smelling after three days in the hospital.
Of course, on the way from the hospital to the freeway, we got lost once again. Apparently, it’s just something I do, but after turning on the GPS, we quickly got back on track and made it home.
The first thing we did when we got home (after our bathes) was to unpack all of our diabetes supplies and clear out an area in an easy to access cabinet. Princess K’s diabetes supplies are something that we access several times a day, so I wanted easy and quick access to these supplies. Our house is crazy around meal time, and I don’t want to have to spend a long time getting her stuff ready, so I set everything up in a way to make this possible. You really don’t want to have to rifle through things looking for that lost glucose meter when you need to feed your diabetic breakfast and you are already running late for school in the morning.
That night was our first night being completely on our own with no nurses to yell at us if we goofed up. It was a little scary and intimidating to be on our own, and there was always a fear that we might goof something up. 
We took our time to load up the glucose monitor, did our blood glucose check and our numbers were all in line. Whew, that was a relief! This was a bit of good news, so we happily proceeded to load up our first home brewed insulin shot. At meal time, we have two different insulin types that need to be mixed up and given in one shot. They need to be mixed up in a certain order, and you can’t push back extra insulin into the bottle. If we goof up in drawing the insulin, we have to throw away the needle and start over with a new one. Insurance pays for these needles, but they are still expensive and time consuming to draw up, so you don’t want to goof up very often. So far, after three months, I’ve only had to throw away one needle.
We successfully drew up our needle, finished our insulin shot, measured out how many carbs we were allowed that night and sat down for our first home cooked meal. What a feeling to be free and home, but what fear being home alone and on our own without any backup if something went wrong.
That night, Princess K slept in bed with me just in case anything went wrong. It’s been a long time since I’ve worried about my kids sleeping at night, but it all came back as I was up several times that night shaking Princess K to make sure she responded and hadn’t slipped into a diabetic coma during the night. This isn’t something common with diabetics, but being a dad with a new diabetic, the fear was there.
We made it through our first few nights without any issues, and quickly learned that having a diabetic child isn’t too rough, but there are quite a few changes that one needs to keep in the forefront of your mind. First and foremost is the fact that we must check her blood glucose throughout the day. If she plays really hard, we need to check it each hour. Otherwise, we need to check before each meal and before bedtime. In addition, her meals and snacks need to happen around the same time each day. Not to mention, she needs to eat a certain amount of carbs for each meal and snacks. In other words she NEEDS to eat a certain amount of carbs. In her case, this means she’s actually having to eat MORE now.
Having a diabetic child also means that we can’t go shopping after picking her up from daycare and just wait to have dinner at 8pm. We need to rush home right after daycare, give her the insulin shot, and feed her before her blood sugar dips too low. This presents a challenge, say, if you have one kid in TaeKwonDo around dinner time, but you need to have the diabetic child home to actually eat dinner and have her insulin shot at the same time. Or maybe you are out at Legoland or Comic Con for the day and you need to give an insulin shot and have dinner right in the middle of the venue.
All in all, we’ve been home almost three months now, and so far Princess K has done fairly well with her diabetes. She’s had a successful forth birthday, which meant finding a sugar free pie to eat during her afternoon snack time (no snacks at night unless her blood sugar is too low, which is a rare occurrence).
We’ve trained her daycare on what to look for regarding hypoglycemia (blood sugar too low) and hyperglycemia (blood sugar too high) and what to do on either condition. The daycare does her lunch time glucose check and feeds her lunch that I pre-measure in the morning and bring to school in a cooler.
We’ve figured out how to work around our schedules and get her home in time for her insulin shot and have dinner. On TaeKwonDo days, I drop off Super Michael at the studio, then head home to give Princess K her shot and feed her. She stays home with Super Mega Mommy while I run back to the TaeWonDo studio to pick up Super Michael.
One thing we learned during our hospital stay was that many, many people have Type 1 Diabetes and it doesn’t really slow people down at all…as long as you don’t let it. We learned about NFL players, race car drivers, marathon runners, and many others that have diabetes and we learned that diabetes doesn’t control them as long as they don’t let it.
And we’re not about to let it control us either.
