Diagnosis....IDDM (Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus)

The story of my diagnosis isn't an easy one to tell. It happened in a very turbulent time in my childhood. Study has shown that most IDDM (Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus) diagnoses are triggered by some sort of trauma or a traumatic event in the child's life, causing an auto-immune response that tells the body to release antibodies to attack and kill off the part of the pancreas that produces the hormone Insulin. 

If you don't know what type 1 diabetes is, now is the time to look it up, I don't want to bore you with too many facts at this point :)

My mother left my father a few years before i was diagnosed. My mother moved us (me, my sister and two younger brothers, as well as our step sister, the oldest, from mum's former marriage) an hour away from the family farm to live in town. 

I've always tried to hide the past to protect those I love, and I am sorry if by me telling my experiences causes shame or hurt, but this is my story and I was just an innocent child, going through an extremely challenging time in my life and the fact I turned out as well as I have is a miracle. Hiding my past doesn't help those who might be in a similar situation, and this is my, if i can do it, so can you! blog.  

Picture a 9 year old child, newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, living in an over populated, unkept, unorganized, mess of a house with kids and teenagers running wild (with babies) and add an alcoholic mother on heroin and a bad ass (not in a good way) step sister, her boyfriend and derelict friends who all also shoot up drugs, smoke weed, do speed, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and break the law. And lets not forget their prostitute friends. It doesn't make for the most nurturing environment at all....

The first sign that I might have been heading down the juvenile diabetes highway was during an asthma attack which hospitalized me for a few weeks. I was about 8 years old, but close to being 9 years old. The details are all a little foggy but I remember being in the kids ward, my mother was visiting and I was extremely thirsty. Id had an IV in and was getting O2 and fluids but nothing was enough. After my mother went home I fell asleep but woke up because i needed to A) go to the toilet and B) get another drink but I couldnt get out of the bed for fear that id knock over about 20 glass bottles someone had lined up along side me in bed. I know now that I was hallucinating but at the time I thought it was completely real I was trying to be as quiet as possible. I can still remember the glass bottles!

The next day I told them what had happened and they decided to test my blood sugar level. 

I don't remember what the level was but I know it was higher than it should have been and the Doctor said it must have been much higher the night prior. 

I was taking a course of steroids for my asthma at the time and they can cause a raise in blood sugar levels in non-diabetics so it was soon amounted to that and that was it, case closed.

Some time after this event, who knows when for sure, it could have been weeks or it could have been a month or two, I do know that I was 9 years old and it was probably around August and my health started to deteriorate, fast. I dropped weight all of a sudden, I'd been a chubby kid all through my school years (and even now... lol) so the weight loss i didn't mind but wow was I cranky. And THIRSTY, and constantly peeing! I remember the day I was diagnosed, I was so thirsty I actually started taking my drinks with me to the toilet, it was literally going in one end and out the other! My head felt like i had a tension headache filled with sand and everyone around me was nuts. 

My mother was a very skilled and knowledgeable nurse before she had 5 kids, her father is an insulin dependent diabetic and her mother a type 2 so she could see, even though I was the middle child, of a large family, in a very unstable home, that some thing was wrong. 

Mum took me to her fathers house so he could test my BSL (Blood sugar level). He tested on every meter he had in the house.... all the same result, HI. 

Meaning my bsl was higher than the meter could read. 

A normal bsl is between 4 mmol/L and 10 mmol/L, the meter stops reading at 30 mmol/L.

Mum then took me to the hospital where they tested my bsl and got a level of 36.6 mmol/L (658.8 mg/dl for my American friends) Here is an easy converter if you're curious :)

I was out of school for a few weeks trying to learn all about my disease. Learning how to test my BSLs, how to draw up and inject insulin, how to document all my readings, medications, diet and ups and downs. I learned how to recognise what a hypo is and how to treat it, how to count meal portions and more importantly, what I can and can not eat. 

My mother was with me at every step of the way at this point, but that wouldn't be for long.... 

All the skills I learned in the first year of being diagnosed would have to help me and carry me through years of doing it all alone. 

Becoming Miss Independent type 1....