When we are told that a child is on the way the worry begins. Will the baby have 10 toes and 10 fingers? Will it have a genetic deformity? Will it's brain be damaged? Shortly after birth many of these questions are answered and for most people they are answered very pleasantly. Now it is time for the real worry to begin!
For almost as long as I have known my husband I have known that his brother and father had a rare disease. They were type 1 diabetics.
There are 2 main forms of diabetes, type 1 and type 2. By far the most common is type 2. T2 diabetics are almost always over 40 yrs of age and overweight. Their disease can be controlled to a large extent by the food they eat and by the amount of exercise they get. Many can go through life with little or even no medication as long as they stick to a low carbohydrate diet and drink plenty of fluids. T1 diabetics are not so blessed.
The body is an amazing machine created by God! After we eat, the pancreas measures the sugar in the blood and releases just the perfect amount of insulin to unlock the cells of our body so sugar can be let in and used. For T2 diabetics the pancreas functions very well and releases insulin but the cells have trouble unlocking. Sugar and insulin build up to dangerous levels. The cure is pills that help the cells unlock and limited amounts of sugar in the diet. T1 diabetics are at the opposite end... their pancreas is not working... there is no insulin. No insulin to unlock the cells so the sugar builds and builds. The body squeezes water out of cells to help flush the dangerous levels of sugar out of the body. This triggers the brain to tell the T1 to drink more water. They drink more causing them to spend increasing amounts of time in the bathroom.
So how did this happen? For T1s it is a destruction of the pancreas cells by the body. Yep, that's right, the body itself is doing the damage!
For some reason (many doctors believe it is triggered by a virus) the body's own immune system targets the pancreas as a foreign object. The immune system begins a slow destruction of what it thinks is the enemy... in short it is doing what it is meant to do but in this instance it is aiming at the wrong target! Because of this type 1 diabetes is classified as an "autoimmune disease". A disease that is the result of a malfunctioning immune system.
So why am I posting this? Why a post about a disease that has a 1 in 250 chance of effecting me? Because we are in the 1 and not the 249. Last week our oldest son, age 11, was diagnosed as T1 diabetic. He also was diagnosed as having another autoimmune called Hashimoto's disease. Hashimoto's attacks are focused on the thyroid glad. I have Hashimotos. With 2 parents having autoimmune genes the chances that our children will be T1 goes to 1 in 2o... sorry guys... we wish we could take it on ourselves!
What does all this mean? It means that our son must get his insulin from somewhere else. It means his parents, and at some point in the future himself, must become his pancreas. We must know how much sugar (carbs) are in every bite he eats and then inject the proper amount of insulin. We test his blood glucose (BG) a minimum of 5x/day and he gives himself insulin shots after every meal and at bedtime. the goal is to keep his BG from rising above 180 or falling below 80... that is our ideal.
Two weeks ago our ideal was a larger house and a newer truck. This week our ideal is what every parent longs for, a happy, healthy child.
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