Diabetes Dx Journey Part 1

A fluke. That is how we found out that Elise has diabetes. She had no symptoms, and we had no reason to suspect anything was wrong with her. Because she had been diagnosed with UTIs a few months ago, the doc decided to do a urine test at Elise's 12 month appointment just to make sure it was clean. I think they were as surprised as we were when they found sugar in her urine.

When I got the call Friday afternoon, my stomach dropped. The nurse said it could just be a mistake, and we should bring her in for a retest the next morning. I had a diabetic friend in junior high, so I knew what sugar in the urine meant. I hoped that it was just a mistake.

Saturday we were busy getting ready for Elise's first birthday party, there was a tonne of things to do, but first we had to go to the doctor's for the repeat urine test. We went home and waited for the news. When the doc called she said it was still positive for sugar, so she was waiting to see some results from the blood they had taken the day before. Fred had a lunch to go to, so I was home by myself when the doc called and told me we needed to take her for another blood test called a hemoglobin a1c. It would show us her blood sugar levels from the past few months.

So off we went to Children's Hospital ER in Plano. The reason we went to Plano was because (our doc's reasoning) it had only been open for 3 weeks, and wouldn't be as busy as Children's downtown. It wasn't really an emergency, but there wasn't anywhere we could get blood drawn and results back so quickly. We made it home only 10 minutes before her party was supposed to start.

We were about an hour into the party when we got the call. I started to cry and could barely think straight. Our doc told us we needed to check into Children's Hospital so they could monitor Elise. Stunned doesn't even begin to describe how we were feeling.

This post has started to get rather long, so I'm going to spread it out over a few posts. Again, if you have called or emailed and I haven't answered, I apologize. I'm still trying to process what this all means, and it's exhausting; both mentally and physically. I hope to be in touch soon.

Thanks for listening.