Garrett, about a year after his diagnosis
It started with a passing thought that my son seemed rather thin. Garrett had just turned seven, and had always been a slender, active child. But as he was coming out of the bath one evening, his shoulder blades stuck out noticeably. A few days later, a friend commented, “Wow, he’s a really skinny kid, isn’t he?”
I started making a conscious effort to be sure he ate his dinner and had plenty of helpings of dessert. But it didn’t make an obvious difference. Still, despite his low weight, he was happy, playful, and full of exuberance. I figured it was his high energy-level that kept him slim. “I wish I had your metabolism,” I told him once. But still, I kept after him with extra servings of food.
Then one afternoon his school phoned. “Garrett says his stomach hurts,” the secretary told me. I drove immediately down to the school and signed him out. “Your stomach is hurting?” I asked. He nodded, smiling. I felt his forehead—no signs of fever. At home, he asked to play video games, and seemed his normal self. I thought maybe I’d been duped. “Hummmm. A stomachache was it?”
“Mommy, I’m Sick.”
Two days later, the school called again. “He says he feels sick, and his stomach hurts.” I drove down to the school once more. This time I was somewhat suspicious. “Your stomach hurts? Where does it hurt? Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?” He shook his head. “Well, can you finish your school day and we’ll talk about it later?”
“No, Mommy. I’m sick. I want to go home.” I checked him out of school. I took Garrett’s temperature, but it was normal, and just like the previous incident, once he was home he laughed, played, and wanted to do all his favorite things. I started to wonder whether the stomach aches had an emotional cause. I asked him a lot of questions about school, friends, and whether anything was making him upset. But nothing seemed amiss.
Trouble Beneath the Stars
That weekend, our family drove to the desert to stay in a friend’s cabin. We brought my telescope to look at the stars. The first night in the cabin, Garrett woke me up in the middle of the night. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. His father took him outside. About an hour later, he woke again. “I need to go to the bathroom again.”
On the drive home, Garrett kept insisting we stop. It was frustrating, because we had a long stretch of desert road with no bathrooms in sight. “I really have to go to the bathroom,” he whined.
“Again?” I asked. “But you haven’t even had anything to drink!”
After we pulled over at the side of the road for the third time, I told his father, “Pay attention and see if he passes a lot of urine or a small amount.” I knew that sometimes bladder infections cause an intense urge to use the bathroom, but not much urine comes out. So maybe he had a bladder infection. Garrett and his Dad went into the bushes and returned. I looked at his father. “There was quite a bit,” he told me.
Could Garrett have Diabetes?
Now I was worried. My father had type II diabetes, so I knew the general symptoms. Thirst, frequent urination, etc. Could Garrett have diabetes? It started to seem like a real possibility. I tried to recall if I’d noticed him using the bathroom frequently at home. I hadn’t. Since Garrett was seven, he used the bathroom on his own, without asking. I had no way of knowing the frequency of his bathroom trips.
Garrett was seen the following morning by his pediatrician, who did a blood and urine test. We waited in the tiny office for a very long time, but finally the doctor returned. “Why don’t you go home and I’ll call you,” he said. “But don’t leave the house. Please wait for my call.”
The doctor phoned not long after our arrival home. “Garrett needs to go to the hospital immediately—right this minute. There is a bed waiting for him at Children’s Hospital.”
When I told Garrett where we were going, he said… “The hospital? Will I have to get a shot?”
Sigh. How do you tell your child he’ll need four to five shots a day for the rest of his life?
“Your son has diabetes,” we were told by the pediatric endocrinologist, but we’d already figured it out. “His blood sugar was over 1,000.” Since a normal result is between 80-120, Garrett’s blood sugar was ten times higher than a healthy reading. Long story short, his pancreas was dying a slow death.
I will continue my account with Garrett, his hospital days and beyond, in a blog to follow. But for now, I will say that Garrett has done tremendously well and is almost entirely independent with his diabetic care. He’s a tall, handsome fifteen-year-old, and a straight-A student.