Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Sick Day


When we were in the hospital with Sage 3 months (eternity) ago, they taught us an overload of information.  The only thing that I didn't feel like I understood was a "sick day."  Well, I don't UNDERSTAND any of it, and if you talk to the nurses, they really don't either.  These past few weeks have not been fun.  Sage's blood sugars have been running up for several weeks, and I've been on the phone with doctors and nurses these past few weeks (especially the weekend) more than any friend or family member I have.  2 am blood sugar checks for well over a week now.  And then it happened in the midst of all of that:  she got sick on Thursday night.  Out of the blue.  Crying with a fever.  She moaned all night, and I knew her fever was back.  This is awful when your child DOES NOT have diabetes.  But this presented a whole new ballgame for me.  One that I did not wish to play.  Travis was out of town.  I couldn't even find the thermometer.  I had to page the on call dr to know what I could even give her medicine wise.  The next morning, I called her pediatrician, who was sadly out that day, but they still wanted to see her.

Though she never complained of her throat hurting, it did look slightly red.  She had a headache and fever of 102.9.  When you are sick, the liver releases extra glucose to fight infection.  In a person like me, the pancreas releases extra insulin to compensate.  But in Sage, this doesn't happen, so it creates a possible dangerous situation.  So in any sickness, you have to constantly monitor these blood sugars, give extra insulin, and check for what are called ketones.  These are poisons that can cause a diabetic to go into a coma.  So, LOTS of fun. The dr did a strep test, and it was positive.  The above picture is in the office.  So on top of the many shots and finger pricks she already gets, she had to have that penicillin shot that is like shooting in a bottle of glue in for 20 seconds.  It was awful.  Jaggar was crying.  Sage was screaming.  It was horrible for me to have to see her endure.  She's had enough.  To save a long story, she got the shot, but because of sickness, continued to have high blood sugars, which they expected.  She had headaches for 2 days because of the high blood sugars.  But they didn't come down 24 hours after the fever broke.  They seemed to go higher.  This sickness knocked her out of that honeymoon phase where the body makes its own insulin somewhat still.  So basically, it killed off her remaining cells.  I always thought that would be really difficult for me, and at this moment it is, but it has to happen.  Because until this happened, we can't have an unexplainable healing.  So they're having to make more adjustments...and from talking to them, there is no end in sight of that for much length of time.  So there are several more nights of 2 am blood sugars.  I haven't slept in a week.  Sometimes it takes me hours to go back to sleep after getting up at 2.   Because like the past week, they are still high, and I lay there figuring out why, how to fix it, what I will say when I call...IF I will call or just do it myself.  I am 8 months pregnant, and I wanted to enjoy these last few weeks of pregnancy with the 2 kids I have.  

I fully understand that there are worse things in the world.  I get that.  But this is definitely in the top.  This is no way for anyone to live, especially a child.  I have looked for testimonies of people healed of type one diabetes and have found none.  But I just had to stop.  Because on Sunday, if I didn't hear anything else, my friend Steve so appropriately sang out of his own spirit, "Just stand on His Word."  It is all I have.  I KNOW God wants us to live well.  I have scripture after scripture of that, but sometimes, I have to ask God, if He loves us so much more than we love our own children (which is the strongest love I've known)--us as humans being evil, you know--how does HE endure this pain we all feel FOR Sage?  I haven't really gotten an answer.  But if He is as compassionate as I know He is...does He have to turn away?  Or is the outcome of this, what is on the other side, worth it?  And I don't mean the other side of eternity.  If it doesn't get better than this till eternity, God take me now. 

I can't believe that I have to give up so much of my life talking on the phone to nurses and doctors.  More importantly, I can't believe SHE is going to have to live her life like this.  It is not right.  It is purely evil.  Such an attack on such innocence.  Such responsibility (even though I do most of it) on someone whose biggest worry should be if she put her tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy.  I simply just want to be able to breathe somewhat.  I feel like if there's anymore pressure, I might break.  But maybe I don't know my own strength.  Because if you'd told me this is where I'd be 4 months ago, I'd have said, "Oh no, I can't handle that.  No way."  But nope.  I guess the greatest thing I can say to that is, "I am STILL here."  Waiting.  Trusting.  Reassuring myself with what I know and believe to be true.  I asked Travis the other night, "Travis...do you believe God is going to heal her?  Because if not....if you don't feel that, I don't want to keep holding out, you know?"  He said, "Oh...I'll never stop believing that.  I KNOW it can happen.  I believe it will.  You just have to calm down and just live for what this moment is."  So me, being the uptight, I'd like it yesterday kind of person, is striving (and failing, then striving again) to do that.

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