wearing your pancreas on the outside

Sickness is scary.

When the big kids are sick, it’s scary.

Recently, C said he was having excruciating stomach pains and I was constantly going back and forth about what I should do about it. Should I take him to the hospital? He wasn’t having any symptoms except for his stomach hurting and the medical training in me wasn’t giving any answers because it typically doesn’t with my own children. Eventually, I figured out what it was, gave him the proper medications and care, and I fixed him. But, it was still hard. I still worried.

K went through a period where she was diagnosed with abdominal migraines. She would throw up for days but there was nothing wrong with her. I think it was, ultimately, a medication we had her on and possibly nerves because she doesn’t get sick if her anxiety isn’t under control. But for a while it was worrisome. What was going on with her? Why did everything make her sick? She missed so much school because the school doesn’t let kids stay if they are vomiting and she was always vomiting!

But what’s it like to be an external pancreas and deal with an illness?

When Tiny Man is sick, I worry. I worry about everything with him. The first fever he had I was a mess of emotions. But when he’s sick, I just want to hold him and be with him and make it better. It doesn’t help that he refuses to take medication, so I have to diligently watch fevers to make sure that they don’t get too bad. It also doesn’t help that he’s three and if he’s going to throw up it’s going to be all over something and that’s always fun. But now that we have diabetes, it’s even harder.

He had a stomach bug, so we have to deal with that. Monitoring the fever that came with it, deciding about school, pushing fluids because we don’t want him to get dehydrated. These are all important things that we have to watch with any kid who’s expelling all the nutrition from their body in a less than ideal way. Gotta make sure he’s getting good rest, also, which is hard for a three year old.

And then we have to keep him alive. He’s not eating a lot so his blood sugars are low. The stomach bug slows down absorption so his blood sugars are low. So, let’s stop the insulin because he’s not eating or drinking – but we stop the insulin and he starts to develop ketones which can send him into deadly DKA very quickly.

It’s a constant balancing act between pushing sugary fluids/carby foods and hoping he doesn’t throw up. Every time I give him a carby or sugary food, I give him insulin to balance it out, and if he throws up he will likely plummet into low numbers due to the insulin.  But he has to have insulin to get rid of the ketones. There’s conversations with the doctors and decisions to make about how long we will wait before we bring him to the hospital. To say I’m exhausted is a bit of an understatement, as I haven’t really slept for two days.

Right now, he’s riding at 72, which I’m okay with. This morning he had two waffles with jelly and regular power aid and he only got up to 100. This is with him getting the smallest amount of insulin per hour with his pump. At least his A1C will be good by next time.

But he takes it all like a champ. He’d play his DS while I offered him something to drink and he’d drink it without pause (yes, I held the straw up to his mouth and I fed him pasta yesterday because if that makes him eat than so be it). He threw up once, took a shower, and then went right back to suffering through his momma pushing juice, cola, and poweraid in his face just so we could get his blood sugars back to normal. Last night his belly hurt and I swore it was going to be an all nighter, balancing between him throwing up and me needing to get something in him. We were even prepared to do mini-glucagon shots if necessary. It didn’t come to that, which I’m thankful for, but I still was up every hour checking to make sure his numbers weren’t falling too fast.

Playing the role of Mom and pancreas while he’s sick is not my idea of a good three days off of work, I’ll tell you that.