One of the problems most parents come up against is wondering if your child is just sick or has something really serious. This goes beyond the usual “My stomach hurts” didn’t-do-homework flu. Every child drags their feet in some way at some time and my personal philosophy has always been that if he or she is doing well in school, cutting them a little slack now and then is okay. Sometime they just need to stay home for a day and flake out on the couch. After they finish whatever homework is at the root cause of the mystery ailment, of course.

Because of Type 1’s vague initial symptoms and the ease with which they can be applied to something else, it’s pretty easy to put off going to the doctor. The other side of the coin is some parent’s I’ve talked to took their child to the doctor at the beginning of the onset of symptoms only to be told it’s just a flu or there’s nothing to indicate anything serious – of course these diagnosis were made without the benefit of a simple finger poke to test blood sugars or even sending the child for a fasting blood sugar lab test.

There are doctors out there who have an image in their heads that all mothers spend every hour of every day pouring over medical books, watching drug ads and cruising the internet for new symptoms to obscure diseases they or their child just might have. Marcus Welby syndrome or, more accurately, Munchausen by proxy, is always floating in the back of their heads. That and the tendency of doctors, unfortunately mostly male, to discredit the concerns of women. There, I said it. Not all doctors are like this and most of them were educated before the 70’s when concepts like bedside manner and spending time with your patient were given all of 10 minutes in the curriculum at medical schools. Fortunately, like wearing one’s second best suit into surgery, this attitude has been slowly phased out of medical training.

When we came back from our camping trip, I made an appointment with the doctor for my sugar lump in a week, the afternoon after Labour Day, when she’d be home from that first day back to school. She seemed a little cranky and not terribly enthusiastic about anything – a little bit of maybe a cold coming on?; a little bit of not really too keen on going back to school? Except this is a kid who liked school and was keen on seeing all her friends again. So, another nagging doubt about just what was going on, another check on my list of why this just might be….

Both the girls went for a sleep over at Granny’s house. When we picked them up the change in sweetums was noticeable. She was listless, pale and not at all interested in having breakfast at the restaurant where we’d met Granny.  She expressed concern over the symptoms Rachael was showing and agreed with me there was something very wrong I assured granny the the girl was scheduled to see our doctor the next day.

That night things progressed rapidly as she got more ill and listless. I considered taking her into the emergency ward but hesitated, again. I tried to detect any sweetness or aldehyde smell on her breath – the same smell you get from someone who’d been drinking heavily hours earlier – but there was nothing. She vomited and seemed to shrink in front of our eyes. My husband was also concerned but still thought it was probably a flu.

The next morning, she was hard to wake, got up, walked to the couch and lay there. Both my husband and I were shocked to see she appeared to have lost 10 pounds quite literally overnight. Then I phoned the doctor and said I was bringing her in as soon as posssible.

She’s drinking water all the time, or pop and, of course, has to pee every five minutes. This is how it usually starts. By this time you are well on the way to joining the ranks of a parent of a child with Type 1 diabetes.

In our case, I’d suspected it might be diabetes when we were camping and my little sweetie would be in tears because we told her she couldn’t have a can of pop after supper. I was tired of getting awoken twice a night to walk down the road to the toilets with her and we figured maybe if she didn’t drink anything after supper, maybe it would take care of the situation. No, we were just torturing out child because we didn’t understand the dynamics of a metabolism out of whack.

See, the first thing that happens as insulin production slows down is the sugars we consume – and I’m talking about sugar from everything, before the health nazis begin to rant about white death, etc. The body makes sugar out of almost everything we eat and every cell in the body needs it to function. Honey, fruit, brown, white, potatoes, whole grain cereal…you name it, even meat, eventually turns into a combination of sugars and other compounds. Do I sound like I’ve had this discussion before? Since I was a teenager, my friend, and the rise of “use honey, it’s better for you because it’s not sugar” first hit the popular lexicon of catch phrases. Honey is sugar, brown sugar is sugar, dextrose is sugar, fructose is sugar. … sugar sugar sugar…. they metabolize at different rates, of course but that is a different discussion – something to hold in store for a later date…can you stand the suspense?

Anyway, when the glucose in the blood can’t get into the cells, it continues to circulate in the blood stream, thickening it – no, seriously, it really does, I know this because I’ve seen it for myself but that is later in the story – and making it harder to push through the system So, the brain is given the signal to take on more liquid to dilute the blood. This is the thirst. The kidneys are told to get the sugars out of the system by filtering it out and that is the urgent need to pee all the time.

That is where my sugar plum was when we were camping that summer – her blood getting thicker and the cells beginning to starve, slowly.

So ends the first chapter of the story. Here’s a link to a short list of symptoms of Type 1 from the JDRF international website. Symptoms There will be more about JDRF later but for now, read and learn and if that little voice in the back of your head is saying, gee, maybe that’s what is happening to my kid, don’t worry about being wrong, go to the doctor as soon as possible and be sure

Our daughter was first diagnosed in the fall of 2001. It was the beginning of a long journey where we learned she was the one who has to take the insulin but the whole family has to deal with the effects of the disease. It’s been interesting and educational and maybe there’s some information here that may be of help to someone out there just starting out on the journey. Maybe it will help you if you know someone whose family is starting up the mountain. Or maybe this is the way you will get to know someone dealing with Type 1.

Oh, and if you learn only one thing, let it be that you don’t get Type 1 Diabetes from eating too much candy.