Crazy Week Part 2

I wasn’t sure I was going to go into detail about this or not, but I tell stories so I can’t really resist the thought of sharing. Like a good horror story, this one does have a happy-ish ending, at least so far.

From what we can tell, it is something that had been going on for a while but it all came to a head this weekend. My youngest grand-daughter had been sick for a little while. This is to the point where she had been puking.

Last Friday, my daughter took her to the emergency room. Well, not at first, at first we started with urgent care. We had been turned away from urgent care because she is only 9 months old. The place we had gone didn’t want to bother with a baby so young. So that meant a trip to the ER. Mind you this running around happened because we couldn’t get an appointment to get into her regular doctor’s office.

After a short time in the ER she was sent home. They said she had a virus and it had to run its course. Whether or not this is standard procedure is irrelevant I think at this moment. The thing that gets me is they didn’t really investigate. The symptoms said that she had a virus so that was what they went with.

By Sunday, she wasn’t keeping anything down. In fact, she had gotten so bad that she had become weak and listless. Of the two grand children this is the happy one. She is also a screamer, this little demon makes more noise than her 2 year old sister. At this point, when she had barely the strength to hold her head up, it was time for another trip to the ER.

I don’t know if two trips to the ER is the litmus test that they need to decide on deeper testing, but someone actually had the bright idea to do some further tests. We got a call from my daughter that they were admitting her. Her sugar levels had hit over 700, and her body had been eating itself.

For those who might not understand what that means, she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Her sugar was so high that her body was metabolizing her fat stores in order to get some nutrition to keep itself going. This might sound like a good diet strategy but when it gets to this point you are actually pretty close to death. They hooked her up to IVs and insulin pretty quick.

Juvenile diabetes is a pretty rare condition but it the treatments for it have gotten much better. I dare say that if this had been 20 years ago, there is a good chance that she might not live to reach her teenage years and if she had been lucky she might see 20. But times have changed. A well medicated person has a chance now. They can fight and work to live a pretty close to normal life.

That sounds heartening. That even sounds brave. But the truth of the matter is, the whole thing is pretty terrifying. More so when you can see the child slipping away right before your eyes.

But they are home from the hospital now. She has returned to her normal self for the most part. Although getting pricked and medicated on a fairly regular basis is having a traumatic affect on her life. There is a blessing in that, this will be a normal thing for her. She will never remember a time where she didn’t have to test her blood. That seems like a strange silver lining but it is a silver lining none the less. Her friends may not have to do this but at least she won’t feel the weight of the time when she didn’t have to. It is a convoluted blessing but a blessing none the less.

I wasn’t there for the second trip to the ER, but my wife was. My daughter hit momma bear mode and whipped out her claws. It wouldn’t have gotten this bad if they had run a few tests the first time. Her reactions though, gave me some moments of reflection.

We spend our lives protecting our children as they are growing up. We take it upon ourselves to hopefully put them in a position where they can learn and become good adults. We can’t shield them from everything but we do what we can. And then there is that moment when you find that they are now the ones protecting and fighting for their own cubs. The best you can hope for is that you have shown them the way to do it. I wish I had been there to see my daughter at that moment (though I confess I would have probably gotten in the way and done my thing at that time).

Growing up is never easy. Sometimes life throws stuff at you, you can never really prepare for. The best thing you can do is roll with the punches and keep pushing on.
I realize I didn’t really need to share any of this. The stuff that happens on this site really doesn’t go into my personal life this deeply. But really, this was something I needed to dig through for myself. Writing at times is cathartic and we really need to let go of the things that dig into our souls.

In the end, as I have said this has been a bit of a crazy week. Things are happening, things are moving forward. We still have things to learn and grow into but life continues on whether we want it to or not.

And now for a last little bit, I will be finishing up a couple stories for the yearly IU anthology collection. These last few stories are probably going to be a bit longer than the usual 250 words. But that’s part of the fun. Some times things in life find ways to surprise us. We may not always like the surprises but they are there for us anyway.