Catch Up

There has been so much happen in our lives the past 5 months! Its hard to know where to begin...This may be a super long post with no pictures just words but things that have been going on here, Lets start after my last post, we went to Idaho for a sibling reunion with my family then off to park city, UT to spent the week at our time share with Lantz's family, We had a fun time but Gary and Sher only got a couple days with us when they got the news that Garys mom passed away. So they headed to Illinois to take care of things there and the rest of us finished our vacation. When it was time to go I took my kids back up to my parents to spend a couple weeks with them and Lantz and I headed back to AZ.
In July I had a hysterectomy (that's why my parent's got my kids for 2 weeks) The first week was rough, not gunna lie, but things have improved, It may have been harder having my kids away from me that long than recovering from having my guts sliced open! But, I am thankful for my family and their willingness to take and love my kids while I was recuperating! 2 weeks post op, Lantz and I drove to Mesquite to meet my parents and get my kids! It was wonderful to see them and hug my babies! I think they were home about 2 weeks before school started,
Jaxton and Ryker started 3rd grade this year and have been loving it! One of their teachers has changed (they get the same teacher for 3 yrs at their school) and that has been a little rough, maybe a little more on mommy than the boys! But they still have Mrs Kandice and we are very thankful to have her there! Harlee is in Mrs Cathy's Kindergarten class again and seems to be enjoying it more this year! (YEA)
Next is probably the biggest event of all.......Jaxton had been pretty sick over the weekend and I had debated taking him into the Dr. I work at a Dr office (urgent care type) and had talked to a couple of providers about some symptoms that I had been thinking were a little off, He had been wetting the bed since school started, he had been complaining of chest pain, He has a history of Asthma so I thought the chest pain was related to that. We started his Asthma Inhalers but with no relief...I worked Friday and Saturday night and again kinda mentioned it to the providers I work with but where they hadn't seen him they couldn't give me too much to go on.....By Sunday, he was bad, he was having a hard time, he sounded like he was out of breath and was struggling, we gave another breathing treatment, checked his oxygen levels (which were fine) and no improvement, he slept most of the day, Lantz's parents came over for dinner that night and Lantz and his dad gave him a blessing, I remember Lantz saying the Drs will be able to help you, they will know what to do for you, and you WILL be able to return to school and be a normal child. After the blessing that stuck with me because I thought, why wouldn't he be going to school? Why wouldn't he be a "normal" child? He is sick, he has Asthma, they will give him steroids or something like that to help him and everything will be fine....I was wrong...Monday morning I took the other kids to school and called the back line at the office I work at and said Jaxton needs to be seen, They told me to come on down and they would squeeze us in (another perk of working there) We waited in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, then they took up back into the exam room, where we waited another 30 minutes, I was praying this whole time "Please let them know what is wrong with him, I'm not crazy, Something is wrong, Please don't let them send us home with no answers, he is not OK, I can FEEL it, something is wrong"
One of the nurse practitioners came in, She looked at Jaxton, said his lungs sounded clear. I was thinking...What? Why cant he catch his breath then? I told her he had been sleeping all day Sunday, kinda out of it, only wake up once in a while to take a sip of water then fall back asleep, peeing the bed, peeing the couch, Even in his sleep his breathing was labored. She looked in his mouth and said he was dehydrated, said she wanted a urine sample to see HOW dehydrated he was, because he hadn't really eaten anything in 3 days she wanted to check his blood sugar.
He came out of the bathroom and handed them the urine sample, then the MA came in and poked his finger and I saw that his blood sugar was 368! My heart sunk! I wanted to throw up, I knew what this meant....Debbie came back in on the verge of tears and said I'm so sorry, this isn't asthma, He has Diabetes! His urine glucose levels were over 1000 (machine doesn't read higher than 1000) His ketones levels also were off the chart (over 150) and his blood sugar was 368, normal range is 80-120. She hugged me (I was in shock) and told me to get him to the Phoenix Children's Hospital ER Immediately!
I started out the room still in shock, in a daze, then it hit me when I realized I didn't know where PCH was, I asked the girls at the front desk how to get there and I just started crying, It hit me, My little boy is sick!
I called Lantz and through my tears told him to meet me at the ER, Jaxton is sick! Called my mom to let her know we were headed to the hospital and I would get back to her! I cried and cried, Jaxton was scared and started crying so guess what I did? Yup, cried some more!
We got the ER and they were waiting for us! Our dr office had called them and told them we were on our way! They took him right back and started an IV, drew blood and had a couple Drs come in and see him, before too long we had some more horrible news, Jaxton was in DKA If you want the full medical info on it you can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_Ketoacidosis, In layman's terms its when your body starts eating its own fatty tissue and muscle to survive, Normal levels are around 26 and the lower the number the worse it is, Jaxtons was at a 6! He was sick, really sick, the Dr came in and said we will be starting another IV line and transferring him to the PICU, That was a LONG 24 hours in there, he was pretty out of it for most of it, he would wake up and talk to us but we found out the next day, he didn't remember much of it! They took his blood sugar levers every hour, he wasn't able to eat or drink ANYTHING, if you bring down the blood glucose levels too fast it will cause brain swelling, he was at one point on 6 different IV bags all with different meds in them, his potassium was critically low and took us 4 days of IV's to get it back up, that doesn't sound like that big of a deal but potassium BURNS when in goes into the IV so for 4 days he pretty much cried and whined every time they put a new bag of that on. Lantz and I had lots of training, how to use the monitors, how to count carbs, how to give injections, how to check his pee for ketones, how to figure out how much insulin he needs, when to correct his Blood sugar, when not too, what to do if it drops to low, what to expect when its too high..etc.... BLAH! once we got his labs back under some kind of control then sent us home, Jaxton missed 1 week of school, once he went back I went in at lunch time everyday to help with insulin injections, his school doesn't have a nurse on staff so I was the one teaching his teachers and a couple of the office gals in case of emergency!
Its hard to deal with sometimes, Alot of people don't understand the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. They assume that's he has is because he is overweight, that its because his dad and I are overweight, that we don't feed him the right things, that he eats candy and junk all the time. None of these things are true, He has type 1 diabetes! It is an autoimmune disease, just like thyroid disease or cyclic disease or any other autoimmune problem, he was born with a marker and for whatever reason, he got a illness and his body started killing his pancreas. the Beta cells in his pancreas were functioning at 10% when we found out about his condition, that will go down as time goes on, usually within 6-9 moths it no longer functions.
Right now, he has to check his BS 4-6 times a day with about that many injections of insulin! Most days he is a champ and doesn't complain, he know that without insulin he would be very sick and eventually die, diabetes is our life now...not 1 day has gone by since Sept 12, that we don't have to think about it, we will never have another day in our lives where we wont have to think about it, diabetes has no cure, just the miracle that is called insulin, We pray that research will continue and SOMEDAY, maybe, there will be a cure for Jaxton!