Megan. Megan is now almost 16 yrs old. She was born on May 21, 1997. She was a big baby and although she had a bit of a rocky start she seemed to be just fine. Just fine isn't a word I would use to describe her first year after that though. She had one illness after another, and not just small illnesses, big ones. She had a yeast infection that went from her mouth to her bum and back again that entire first year. She also had ear infections, coughs, colds, fevers and you name it. When she was five months old she had croup that landed her in the hospital, one month later she had it again and I spent 10 days on the couch with a humidifier within a foot. Ten entire days.... By April 1998 I was exhausted. It might have been the hard first year with her, it might have been the fact that I was pregnant with Isaac, or both, but I was tired. She had an ear infection that got so bad her eardrums burst. With blood running out of her ear I honestly didn't know what I had gotten into with that child. It was about to get a lot worse.
May 17th was a Saturday. Jon got up and went to basketball and I started my day with McKenna and Megan. But Megan wasn't well. She was sluggish, tired and wouldn't do much other than sit around. I showered with her, and went about my chores. She seemed off, and as the morning went on it got worse. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. She didn't have a fever or runny nose, she wasn't throwing up or had any other symptoms. The only thing I could pinpoint was that she was breathing fast. I thought maybe she had croup again. I put a call into the doctor, and after describing what was going on the nurse told me to go straight to the ER. I did as I was told, but was wondering why? Seemed kind of drastic...but I did as I was told. My brother came over to watch Kenna and my sister in law was in charge of finding Jon. I went to Alta View. As I sat there getting checked in my reasons for being there sounded kind of dumb.
"What seems to be wrong again Ma'am?"
"Well, she is just off somehow. I can't explain it, but something is wrong. Oh, and she is breathing fast."
I looked down at her and thought "boy, they are gonna call me paranoid and send us home in ten minutes. Now I feel stupid..."
As the doctor looked her over he confirmed that she was breathing fast. Three times normal in fact. He looked at me and very somberly told me that there were only two things that would make a person breath like that. One, she had ingested some sort of poison. Two, she had type 1 diabetes. My mind was reeling, I kept thinking over and over again "What had she eaten that day? Shampoo while in the shower? Cleaning solution?" Even then my mind couldn't grasp what was really going on. The doctor told me there was a quick easy way to figure it out. Megan had her first blood sugar taken right then. They didn't tell me right away though. I paced the hall for a few minutes until he came back.
"Your daughter has type 1 diabetes. We will start an IV, get some fluids going since she is so dehydrated and get her transferred to Primary Children's".
I wasn't sure what to think at that point. I had NO idea how much our lives were going to change. I didn't know any diabetics, no one in either of our families was a diabetic. I was clueless. Jon came to meet me at that point and I filled him in. He was as dumbfounded as I was.
It took them what seemed forever to get an IV going on Megan since all of her veins kept collapsing. She was so sick by that time and I hadn't even known it. How do you know if a baby is peeing more than normal? More thirsty than usual if they can't tell you? She had been drinking a lot of bottles and had been waking up drenched for several days, but she couldn't tell me and I didn't have a clue what to watch for. It was all new to me.
They got her IV in, got her packed onto the stretcher and we went straight up to the hospital with Jon following closely. They got her settled into a room quickly and our world spun completely out of control, but we learned. We learned how to carb count, how much a balanced diet can affect the health of your child, how to give shots, draw up insulin, where to give them and how to poke fingers. What numbers were ok, what weren't and how to deal with it all. Emergency shots, complex carbs vs simple carbs, what foods were "free", what do to if your child begins to seize. You name it, we learned it. After Megan was stabilized they came into our room handed Jon the insulin and a syringe and said "it's your turn to try it". Jon looked at them and told them he wasn't sure he could give his child a shot. Their response? "You can do this or you can watch your child die". That did it. He took them and gave her the shot immediately.
After four long days in the hospital we were released and given medications, supplies, phone numbers and instructions and told "good luck". We were going to need it.
I am not sure any one of us spoke on the way home. We had spent four days in the hospital learning how things would change for us forever....
We have come a long ways in the last 15 years. May 17th will forever be etched in my mind. It's the day I became a doctor, a lobbyist for children's rights, a nurse, a caretaker, a dietitian and the day a new kind of mother was born.
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