This happened last week, but for whatever reason, it’s been on my mind ever since, so perhaps sharing the story will help my mind let it go. Last week, I took my kids to the Thinkery (kids museum/play center place) after picking Adam up from school one day. Within minutes of arriving at the Thinkery, Adam’s blood sugar was dropping fast. 60’s, 50’s, 40’s.
There’s something very heart wrenching about watching a kid come to tears over how awful and hungry he feels. And knowing, even after giving him the carbs he needs to come back up, that he will continue to feel awful for the next 15-30 minutes while his body works to absorb those carbs. And during those 15-30 minutes there’s nothing you can do to make it any better. Some lows are worse than other lows, regardless of the actual BG reading. This was a bad one. After he had given up crying and begging for more food, his body just started to shut down. Here I am in the middle of a children’s play place with a 1 year old and 3 year old thankfully staying in the same room with me and not trying to run off... with a 5 year old who should be having fun, but is fading off, falling asleep in my arms. His face and hair becoming increasingly clammy. And just when he’s fallen asleep, my three year old desperately needs to pee. So I’m carrying my completely limp bodied 45lb child, as I follow the 3 year old to the bathroom and thankfully, the 1 year old decided to follow fairly well, with some stern coaxing to not attempt going down the stairs beside the bathroom.... I’m sure people are wondering at this point why I’m packing the 5 year old and trusting the baby on his own to listen and not to go down stairs instead of just picking him up.
Reluctantly I tried laying Adam on a bench outside the bathroom so I could go inside and help Abby.. Adam woke up just enough to start crying again, and I had to explain that I would be right back, that I had to help Abby even though I was loathe to leave him. After that Abby wanted to go to a different area of the play center and I figured she might as well be in charge of where we play since Adam wasn’t playing. So I carried Adam to the next area, with Logan following behind. Adam and I sat on the floor with him in my lap as I let the other two go play. I’m sure people wondered why I wasn’t more engaged in following my baby around more closely. And Abby somewhat resented me not coming over to play with her in the large play kitchen... but I was grateful that I had been blessed in those moments with kids who listened.
It seemed as though angels were helping my one year old follow and go where he was told when I needed him to, and my daughter was blessed with an extra ounce of patience that day when I told her she would need to wait for some things until her brother felt better. And even though I felt bad that over half the time we were at the Thinkery, Adam was unable to play because he was low, or recovering from the low and still too weak to walk around... he never complained about diabetes ruining his day. I was thankful that even though he was eating outside of the designated snack section, none of the workers said anything to me... and it’s a good thing they didn’t cuz I was prepared to give them an earful. I really just cannot explain the feeling of watching your child’s tear streaked face as he goes weak, looking pathetically miserable, with sweaty hair as his body goes limp in your arms because he lacks the energy necessary just to stay awake.
Tonight I held him in the middle of the night as he cried and cried about a bad Dexcom placement making it so his leg hurt so badly he couldn’t walk, and he was so terrified of it hurting any more than it already did, he started quivering and screaming at the thought of me taking it off despite assurances it would help him feel better. Only to have to tell him I’ll be back later to try again and put a new one on later.. our last one, so, it better be successful this time 😳 And his sad conclusions of “this is why I wish I didn’t have diabetes” just make you want to weep a little inside. This is our life. There are plenty of ways it sucks...such as, if not for diabetes in our life, we would have saved more than half of a down payment for a house worth of money already this year... But most days it’s just my normal, and I can handle it, and he can handle it... but some days, it just makes you wish for things to be different. I can only hope that I do my best to do right by him, and make it as easy as I can, while also preparing him to deal with it on his own one day.
