It was just another day...
A Saturday to be exact. Yay! the weekend.
The weather was stormy, so what could be better on a wet rainy day? To go to Tel Aviv port of course and eat ice cream! There is not much better than eating ice cream in the cold watching the waves crash upon the rocks.
Nelly, kept asking to drink water.
Chucking back bottle after bottle, that in itself set alarm bells ringing in my head. She could not satisfy her thirst, poor thing. This was not the first time. So, I sent the doc a message via the app with my concerns. Funny enough he was working that Saturday eve and sent us on our way to do a set of blood tests for Nelly. We decided we would go first thing in the morning. It was a bit of a struggle for the nurse to find a vein, but success! She did. I bought Nelly a kinder egg as a treat before taking her to kindergarten.
The day rolled on, much like any other Sunday. I decided to sneak in a quick yoga session. As i was stretching back into my second downward-facing dog pose, the phone rang...
It was Nelly's doctor.
"Hi Rachel," he said... I could hear in his softened voice something was wrong.
"You need to take Nelly to Emergency ASAP."
Why? As I'm sure you are all wondering.....
Nelly's sugar levels were sky-high.
You might ask, Rachel: why did the fact she was so thirsty worry you? I guess i did learn a thing or two studying Chinese medicine. One thing came to mind. Diabetes.
And so my friends, after a night at Meir Hospital, the verdict was given. My six-year-old, gorgeous girl has Type 1 Diabetes.
After getting discharged from the hospital, they send you straight to your new, second home from now on. The diabetes clinic. After a sleepless night at hospital, where Nelly was injected 6 times with insulin, pricked on the fingers and toes about ten times, we walked into a doctor's office in the clinic understanding that our lives were going to change from now on.
Big time.
I was on automatic mode at this stage, just taking in all of the information needed to keep my child alive. How to inject her; how to check; how to count her carb intake; how to act when her sugar drops too low......or too high.
Going to the pharmacy to get all we needed was overwhelming, to say the least.
A drawer full of all we will need. When I say a drawer, I mean the first thing Amit did when we arrived home was to clear a massive drawer out for our "new life".
It's all on you now. To know what to do when and how; what needle goes where; what to do and more importantly what NOT to do. To introduce your child to the way her life will roll on from now on. With a wide smile, that cracks your heart up from the inside.
Telling her she can't eat when she is starving. For she has to wait for her Mom and Dad to add up how much insulin she needs to get before. Talk about taking spontaneity out of life. She sits in front of the plate waiting. Patiently, until we are done. She has already got a preference for Amit injecting her, "it hurts less Mommy when he does it, but you will learn also".
We wake up ten times a night for her sensor on her arm beeps that her sugar levels are too low. This means sitting her up at 3 am asking her to drink horribly sweet grape juice.
The worst thing of all is the fact she needs to stay at home. She can't return to her life and to her friends. She must wait for the wonderful bureaucracy to find her a medical assistant to be with her every hour of the day.
Today we went back to Tel Aviv port, it was a beautiful sunny day. And all she wanted was ice cream, like all the other kids.
But, at this stage, as she is so imbalanced it is not a good idea. So we said no.
I am sorry Nelly, that you need to grow up too fast. To have to deal daily with pain and to have to depend on others to lead a "normal" life. To have all you fancy in life taken away when you want it the most.
But I am blessed, for you, Nelly will be feeling better from now on. The water you drink will satisfy you and the food you eat will fill you.
There is no point looking back and asking why...
There are worse things at sea. I am sure that if as a family we will continue to smile, even though the tears come at night when no one else can see.....
She will smile too.
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