We almost made it a calendar year between hospitalizations.
It's been a very hard year for our family, yet a year with great successes. We went from a Coma, to an infant on 8 injections a day, to a pre-toddler on an insulin pump (shaking the diabetes establishment in this city) 6 months after diagnosis, and recently registered a lower, "absolutely amazing" 7.7 A1c for Cadence, only 3 months after her pump start. But you still can't predict the d-mergency. Nicole and Cadence went to Ontario to visit Gramma and Grampa, the first day they were there, Cadence had to be taken to the ER for an IV as vomiting and flu like symptoms threw her blood chemistry for a loop. I was in San Francisco, standing in the parking lot of the Olympic Club when I got the text message saying that Cadence was in the hospital. Everything that I felt last July came back to me as I read the words and I crumbled for a moment.
For diabetic children a trip to the ER for an IV is a part of life and it won't be the last one from what we're told. It turned out to be a positive as Cadence was feeling much better a day later. The fact remains that we strive to never have to be back to the hospital with Cadence and find it so ironic that our goal as parents, before diagnosis, was to never need emergency care for her. The irony now is that we depend upon it for something as simple as a stomach flu.
Our one year D-versary comes up next month on July 19th. We plan to make it a day of exceptional fun for Cadence and put last years experience far behind her. We work everyday to make diabetes a positive in our family's lives, not a negative, and encourage other families to ensure that diabetes is not their disease but their opportunity.
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