This past weekend I noticed an odd numbness. No, not the creeping encroachment of diabetic neuropathy that serves as the monster under the bed to warn all diabetics everywhere that their bad choices will cause loss of limb and sight :( blah … just an odd numbness of my emotion. Here’s how it started.
Friday morning I was standing in my kitchen watching coffee drip drip drip. I heard some light footsteps behind me, they headed into the living room and then
BANG, thump thump thump thump swish thump thump thump swish thump thump thump swish
OH SHIT, I took the three steps around the corner and found my sweet LilG having a full body seizure on the hardwood floor. His eyes were open and fixed to the right of his eye sockets, his head was the thump thump thump on the wood, his arms and legs were rigid and twitching on his jacket swish swish swish on the floor. I started yelling for my husband ‘get the glucagon’ & gently turned him to his side using my hands to cushion his head from the hardwood floor.
Thump thump thump swish thump thump thump swish thump thump thump swish
My husband had left the emergency bag in his car and was running outside to get it, in the meantime I decided to leave lilG and grab the glucagon I knew was in the diabetes cupboard. It seemed closer and faster.
My hands always shake when I prep glucagon. Seeing my own shaking hands scares me even more. Then I have to inject that huge needle into my baby. He seems so little~
Thump thump thump. This time it’s just my heart making that noise. While I sit on the floor cradling my sons head in my shaking hands, his dad calls 911. The 10 minutes we wait for paramedics slip by silently. LilG opens his eyes just as the ambulance pulls up to the front of the house. He is confused and not able to speak. The paramedics start to ask all their questions and lilG can’t answer what his name is, where he lives, what school he goes too… he just looks at me~
and I am numb.
I’ve done this 9 times before, not with LilG, but with his older brother. Each time before I was crying or demanding answers. Answers that never really came. There is nothing wrong with his older brother’s brain, there is likely nothing wrong with LilG’s brain. This is insulin shock. This seizure is the direct result of a miscalculation of food or insulin or activity or the general state of his health. Somehow between the hours of 3 am and 7:30 am his dad and I missed something. This is what happens when an imperfect mumma pancreas makes a mistake. It’s my babies that suffer. Normally it’s me that suffers too but this time I just felt numb.
I just felt numb because I didn’t want to feel the guilt. I didn’t want to let myself feel the pain of what if’s. You know, THE What IF. What if the next time I make this mistake it’s not just a seizure. I just want to feel numb. I stood in the emergency room all last Friday staying calm, answering questions, reviewing blood sugar numbers, reviewing the food he had eaten, the activities he did, holding vomit bag after vomit bag, holding urine collectors, holding LilG’s hand. Nurses, residents, pediatricians, social worker, child life, residents, nurses, pediatricians, social worker and pediatric endocrinologist with more residents came by to ask the same questions. I just wanted to yell at them all: I know it’s my fault! I know I missed something! I know! just let us go home already! I know I missed something and I need to not think about it. I want to be numb.
That’s why I write about my children’s health. It helps me ease the numbness. When I write it out, it hurts and the tears flow and I start feeling again. When I write it out, I can acknowledge how the guilt and worry hurt so much that it’s overwhelming. When I write it out, I can forgive myself for not being perfect because when its written down it doesn’t seem like anybody could ever get this right 100% of the time. So I write. Even though I want to be numb, I can’t be numb. I can’t be numb and be a good mumma. I can’t be numb and be a good mumma pancreas. I have to be feeling so that I can be loving. I have to be feeling so that I can be caring. For me, part of caring is sharing some part of my experiences- the good, the bad, the mistakes, the triumphs. It’s scary to share. It’s scary to feel. I can only hope that being real, acknowledging how hard it is to live with Fucking Diabetes might help someone else. I wish that I knew someone who missed things, screwed things up when we started on this diabetes road back in 2001. Maybe it’s just me that would’ve like to know that, but maybe it’s not just me at all.
This month, I’m participating in WEGO Health’s National Health Blog Post Month #NHBPM and I’m going to write 30 posts in 30 days (I hope). Today’s topic was Why I Write about my families health.
