Eeyore or Tigger?!?

It’s Friday! 3 more days until Christmas! I can’t believe it!

For those of you that don’t know, we have been up at Children’s Hospital in St. Louis since Wednesday with Elizabeth Faith. She has been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. We are still here in the hospital as I’m writing this blog post. It’s 2:00 in the morning <Friday> and they just came and checked Liz’s blood sugar. It’s 108, so I’m worried it’s going to go too low and can’t fall back asleep…

Wednesday afternoon I made Elizabeth an appointment with our pediatrician. For the past few weeks she has had extreme thirstiness and urination. When we were at the zoo this past weekend with my sister and nephews, we were constantly stopping for her to go pee. She also couldn’t make it from Dexter to Cape without having to stop to go to the bathroom.

I thought I was being paranoid because of my nephew’s recent diagnosis with T1D, but I knew something was wrong.

When we got to the doctors office they tested her urine and it had glucose in it. So the next step was to take her blood and check her blood sugar and A1C levels.

Our fears were confirmed when her blood work came back. Type 1 Diabetes. Her blood sugar was 458. Normal range for a kid her age is 70-150. Also, her A1C level was 11.6%. This number is supposed to be at 7.5% or lower. The A1C level shows her average blood sugar levels over the past two-three months. Since her level was 11.6% that tells us that for the past few months her sugar has been averaging somewhere between 300-350 every day. Way too high!

Our doctor immediately contacted Children’s Hospital in St. Louis and we headed straight there. Thankfully we were able to drive Elizabeth on our own and she didn’t have to ride in an ambulance.

When we made it to St. Louis they hooked her up to an IV because she had large ketones in urine. That wasn’t a pleasant experience and it broke my heart to see Elizabeth crying and upset.

Her sugar was 456 when we arrived. With the help of insulin, her sugar went down to 331 during the night and then that morning it was 89. Thankfully it went down really well.

Thursday we had to attend an all day education class to learn about our new lifestyle. It was overwhelming and there was so much information thrown at us during the class.

Thankfully, I had a head start on knowing some of it with watching my sister with Zach. I’m also thankful that I have a strong math background and aced the counting carbs test and didn’t have any trouble with that.

We all had a good cry fest together when we first found out about all of this. But then like we always do, we rallied together and decided this is not going to get us down.

Chris asked Elizabeth if she wanted to be an Eeyore or a Tigger with her Type 1 Diabetes? Meaning does she want to have a Tigger attitude and be happy and bouncy and positive and show others that this disease isn’t going to slow her down.

Or does she want to be an Eeyore that is constantly complaining and being negative about everything.

We have all decided to be Tiggers with this diagnosis. I told Liz that God knew she was strong enough and capable enough to handle this. She also might be a light to others with this disease to show them it won’t stop her from leading a normal life. We know many other kids that live with this disease every day and do well with it!

I’ve definitely had my moments. I first felt guilty and thought what could I have done differently to prevent this? Also, it’s so hard to watch Elizabeth get poked and finger pricked non stop as they are learning to balance her blood sugar. The good ole question of, “why, God?” came back to me, but I quickly silenced it.

This year has been a year of testing (I will blog about that more next week), but the verse from Romans 8:31 comes to my mind. “What, then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”

I pray this will draw us closer to God and closer together as a family. Elizabeth Faith has been so brave and a complete rockstar in all this. She makes me so proud!

Thank you all so much for the prayers, texts, DMs, etc. Chris and I were once again reminded how wonderful of a support system we have. Thank you to our neighbor, Amber, who watched our dog for us with no questions asked. Thank you to Lizzie’s friends that showered her with texts and kind words to help cheer her up. Thank you to Mrs. L for sending balloons to the hospital to brighten her day. And of course our families, have been amazing.

Type 1 Diabetes will not get us down. We will learn how to live with this and be a Tigger in every situation it might bring!

Hope y’all have a wonderful Friday and great Christmas weekend.

~Jen