Musician Mama's world got pretty shaken up this past weekend.
Richard O. had an episode of Diabetic Ketoacidosis, which is sometimes referred to as a DKA. It could have killed him. Untreated DKA has a very high mortality rate. Essentially, sometime over the past few months our son's pancreas gradually stopped working. Without enough insulin to help the sugar into his cells, his blood sugar rose so high that his body dehydrated itself while attempting to get energy by breaking down muscle and fat tissue -- which, in turn, resulted in his blood becoming acidic.
In other words, Richard O has type 1 diabetes.
I still get freaked out every time I think about that. If he had been misdiagnosed, like this little girl, things could have been a lot worse.
Thankfully, we caught it in time. I want to tell our story to get the word out, because while lots of people know that school-aged children can suddenly develop type 1 diabetes, not many people know that infants and toddlers can also have a sudden onset of the disease -- and that its symptoms seem pretty innocuous at first, but can turn deadly in a matter of hours.
So here's how it started:
On December 5th, Richard O had his 12 month well visit, and his overall appearance and behavior were fine, though as I noted before, he had lost a little weight and his appetite had been iffy. In the week that followed, he started eating less and less solid food, until he was basically nursing all day long and eating only trivial amounts of solids. His diapers were significantly wetter than usual, and there were more of them. He was also pretty grumpy. After looking at his swollen gums, I figured it was probably teething.
On December 13th, Richard O seemed really droopy, and we noticed that he would occasionally pant a little, as though he was tired. However, each time I took his temperature, there was no fever. I called the pediatrician's office and relayed the symptoms to the nurse, who consulted with one of the doctors. There was a huge snowstorm that day and the pediatrician's office was closing early, so the nurse told me to take him to Convenient Care if his condition continued to deteriorate.
He perked up after his nap and actually played with me a little bit, so I took that as a positive sign. However, after not eating much for dinner that night he surprised us by vomiting up a little milk, which he NEVER does. It was a small volume, but it was pretty smelly. When he vomited a second time, I started to get quite worried, and resolved to take him to the doctor's the next day.
If I had to do it over again, I would have braved the storm and taken him to Convenient Care anyway at this point. I felt in my gut that something was wrong. I really, really wish I had acted on that impulse.
He was restless that night -- he fell asleep early, then awoke at 9:00 pm and fussed until after 11:00 pm before settling down again.
The next morning Richard O. seemed even more fatigued and his panting was much more pronounced. I got a hold of the pediatrician's office right away and got an appointment. He was quite lethargic and was quite still when I changed his diapers -- this was really odd, since I usually have to wrestle his wriggling little body into a diaper when I change him. And he had a nasty case of diaper rash, which he almost never gets. Every time I put him down on the floor to crawl, he just cried and cried. With my worry quickly mounting, I called Mom to come up and keep me company at the doctor's office.
Upon our arrival at the doctor's office, we were shocked to learn that Richard had lost over a pound of body weight in just over a week. Our pediatrician examined him, asked a few questions, noted that he was at least mildly dehydrated, and ordered blood tests (a CBC and a metabolic panel) to be done at Convenient Care. She suspected that he had a "parafluenza" -- a virus that mimics the symptoms of the flu, but without a fever. My mom, thank goodness, pressed the doctor to have the tests done at the hospital, where they could also start Richard O. on some IV fluids while we waited for the test results.
We were admitted at the hospital, and they drew blood and started Richard O. on an IV. I nursed him afterwards, and his mood rapidly improved as he got the IV fluids -- but then he vomited again. And a second time. And a third time.
And then, after we had been at the hospital for a few hours, the nurses suddenly came flying back into the room to do a finger stick for a blood glucose test. Mom looked over her shoulder at the reading and gasped -- it was in the 500s (normal is more like 90 to 120).
At that point, I knew it was diabetes, and my heart just sunk. I wept as our pediatrician explained the disease. I kept looking down at my beautiful little one-year-old boy in my lap, and wanting to believe that it was all a fluke, even though I knew it was not.
I'll write about what happened next in another post, but I want to reiterate the symptoms of diabetes onset that all parents of infants should know. While it is very rare for diabetes to be diagnosed in a child as young as Richard O., it can happen, and these symptoms can be easily mistaken for something else. If you spot several of these symptoms in your child, call your child's doctor immediately and get a blood test.
Symptoms of diabetes in infants:
- Excessive wet diapers
- Diaper rash that doesn’t resolve quickly or keeps recurring
- Constant hunger and/or thirst
- Irritability or fussiness that doesn’t seem related to colic
- Sleeping more than usual
- Sudden and pronounced weight loss
- Lethargy and reluctance to play or move around
- Dehydration
- Fruity-smelling breath (this is ketosis)
- Labored breathing (known as Kussmaul respirations)
Get the word out to your friends and family who have infants!
2 comments:
I saw a reference to this blog at the Sugar and Spice blog. After reading your story, it sounds like you've weathered a pretty scary situation quite well. If you could do with a little success story, I'll tell you that my husband was also diagnosed with Type I Diabetes when he was very young--2 years old in his case.
He's now 35 years old, and in really good health. He has an insulin pump, which has made all the difference for him. He lives a totally normal life, and I often forget that he even has diabetes.
Of course, it's nothing that I would choose for him (or that he would choose for himself), but it's not the insurmountable mountain that it was back in the olden days. Thank Heaven
Your little guy was diagnosed a week after our little(bit bigger) guy!! I had to write about his diagnoses as well, as it hit us like a Mack truck. We have no history either, so it took a lot to get all the pieces to come together. Getting the word out is so important.
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