You handle it

Reading Sandra's post started me thinking about O and how my ex-husband and I handled her diagnosis. For so long, I knew there was something wrong with her. She was listless and seemed to be losing abilities - first it was a few words, eventually it was the ability to walk. And no one would listen to me - not the doctors, not my mother and definitely not my soon-to-be ex-husband.

So I pushed on. I pushed for something to be done for her, for someone to listen to my pleas for help. Most of the time, I felt like I was in a dream, screaming and screaming, but nothing was coming out.

Finally, I got the pediatrician to do something. I took her in to the pediatrician AGAIN, for a diaper rash from hell. The exhole wouldn't leave me the car that day, so I pushed her stroller the three miles to the doctor's office, then pushed it back. I hadn't even gotten my coat off after getting back to our apartment when the phone started ringing.

"You need to bring her right back to the hospital. She has sugar in her urine and it's very high."

"Is that bad?"

"Yes. Get to the ER. Now."

Well, fuck. Called a cab, since ex-hole still wouldn't come home from work (or, more likely, the bar) and sat in the ER with O, who was almost passed out at this point, and A, who was more than a little freaked out, while doctors drew blood and started IVs and waited for the pediatric endocrinologist to show up. And, of course, the ex-hole.

Her blood sugar was something like 980. This number meant nothing to me at the time but now, still, manages to convulse my heart with paroxysms of fear.

And that was that. She has diabetes, they said. You have to do X, Y and Z, they said, and give her shots and check her sugar and see us every three months.

So that's what I did. I kept logs, I made her 30g carb meals and 15g carb snacks. I made sure she ate every 3 hours. I made sure we had test strips and syringes and insulin and log books. And we never talked about it. I'd try, but he wouldn't. It wasn't to be mentioned again. So we didn't.

And I can't blame the divorce solely on the diabetes, but it did open my eyes to the fact that he just wasn't ever going to be there, that if there were problems, physical or mental, then they were MY problems and he didn't want to hear about them. And that the answers to most of his problems lay in the bottom of a can of beer.

This is the way it's been since then. Just me (only occassonially falling apart) and O, plugging along, doing what needs to be done. Only she and I talk about it. A lot. We talk about site locations and new treatments as they become available and other d kids and camp and all kinds of non-diabetes stuff, too. And I talk to TCBIM about it, and anyone else who will listen.

And I'm so glad to have this place, even though I don't write too often about diabetes, because when I do, I get you guys. And you guys? You guys rock.