It’s 1:30 in the morning, and we’re having the worst week since my daughter’s diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes. Insane blood glucose numbers, ever-increasing insulin needs, ketone testing…and the endless blood sugar testing. My daughter is a pin cushion, and I hate myself each time I jam another needle into her skin, when she winces, but doesn’t say anything, when it hurts badly enough that she says “Ow, that one hurt,” it feels like razors cutting my heart to ribbons.
170 days since the diagnosis. 170 days since I leaned against the wall in the hallway outside the emergency room and allowed myself the luxury of five minutes of tears. 170 days since I called the ex-girlfriend and the midget’s father in the middle of the night and told them to get to the hospital NOW! 170 days since I watched them strap my daughter to a gurney and load her into an ambulance. 170 days since I heard the term “PICU” and realized that’s where my daughter was going. 170 days of trying to readjust to normal, and realize that nothing was ever going to be normal again.
170 means at least 700 finger pricks and 700 injections. And that’s assuming that every day we only test four times and give four injections. Which never, ever happens. When she runs high, I give insulin corrections, then check again to see if she’s come down. When she runs low, I give sugar, then recheck to make sure she’s gone back up. Not even six months in and she’s had 1500 holes poked into her body.
I’m sitting here at 1:30 in the morning waiting for it to be 2AM so that I can test her again, and then lay down and try to sleep, but I know that I will instead spend the rest of the night waking up every thirty minutes to make sure she hasn’t gone low in her sleep. If she does, she doesn’t wake up, which could mean…I can’t even bring myself to type the word, can’t bring myself to use it in conjunction with my beautiful, precious daughter…but it would be very bad.
On the other hand…when she runs high all night like she has all this week, I think about all that sugar in her blood, and the damage it’s doing to her body, knowing that it’s coating the blood vessels in her heart and her eyes and her kidneys, another layer of damage, bringing her that much closer irreparable harm. It sickens me, makes me physically ill, makes me want to scream and cry.
170 days of wishing that I could take her place for each finger stick and injection.
170 days of wishing I could take away her type I diabetes.
170 days of wishing there was a cure…