Diagnosis story
About a month before Harrison was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I noticed a few things were different about him. He was becoming a bit irritable and complained of being tired. He was wasn't really participating in his footy games - we initially thought he just wasn't interested (now we realised he just felt like crap!). Over the next couple of weeks I noticed he was drinking a lot more and needing to go to the toilet a lot more, for example, he would go to the toilet to wee before we left the house, then 10minutes into our drive he would be busting to wee again. He had also wet the bed a couple of times which was unlike him. Thanks to social media and the internet, I was already aware that these were symptoms of diabetes, so we took him to the GP who did a range of blood tests. His random blood sugar levels was 8.6mmol/L, so not drastically high, so the GP decided to do a HBA1C level (checks how blood sugars have been over a 3 month period), just to be sure, but I already knew in my gut that we were looking at diabetes. I booked him back to the GP a couple of days after the blood test was done.
We went to the appointment where the GP said his HBA1C level was 11.6, in a non-diabetic, this level should be below 5.7. so it was definitely diabetes. The GP wasn't 100% certain on the referral process to an endocrinologist, so she called the local children's hospital, who weren't able to take her call at the time. Harrison wasn't critically unwell, so she said to go home and she would call us back with the plan. I was rostered on a shift that afternoon so Harrison stayed home with his Nan while I went to work and awaited a call from the GP (in hindsight, I should have just called to say I couldn't work but honestly I didn't realise the seriousness at the time)
I strolled into work for an afternoon shift, I received a call from our GP stating that we needed to take Harrison into ED in order to join the care team at our local children's Hospital. I called Alex, raced home, home where Harrison was puzzled as to why I was home. I told him that the GP had called due to the blood test results and that we needed to take him to hospital. Our poor mate was frightened and hid under his bed as he'd never been in hospital before. After some talking it through, he came out from under the bed, had a big hug and cry, gathered some things, and off we went to the Monash Children's Hospital. On arrival to ED, they had a bed ready for us as they knew we were coming in. The nurse checked his blood sugar and ketone levels. His blood sugar was 20.4 (should be between 4-7) and ketones were 3.4 (generally should be 0). So not quite in DKA, but very close to it. We received a crash course in type 1 diabetes and started learning how to administer insulin (thankfully I already knew how to as I administer insulin to patients at work as a midwife). We met with Diabetes educators, endocrinologists, dietitians and social workers. By the next day, you could already see how much better Harrison was doing, just from one day of having insulin.
Harrison was pretty happy he got to have sausages and mash every day for lunch and dinner and got to visit the starlight room and play video games.
Here we are almost 18 months later. Harrison is still currently doing multiple injections daily of insulin (1 Long acting at night, and a minimum of 3 short acting at meal times or if his blood sugar is high). We are hoping to start insulin pump therapy in the new year. Harrison also uses a dexcom continuous glucose monitor that measures his blood sugar 24/7.
Thank you for reading ??
