In the previous post I told you about the week and events leading up to the Saturday morning Judah was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I’ll pick up where I left off.

When I called the doctor Saturday morning (November 25, 2017), they got us in immediately because Judah was having difficulty breathing.

Now, when we were at home trying to treat what we thought was an asthma attack, I was telling my husband that it didn’t seem like asthma, Judah wasn’t acting the same as he usually did while having an asthma attack.

We got to the office at the weekend clinic and, usually, when I’ve taken Judah in for an asthma attack, they are on top of it, like getting the nebulizer going within five minutes of going back into a room. For some reason it seemed to be taking longer that morning, or maybe it just felt longer because I was so worried? Anyway, they checked his o2 sats and he wasn’t as low as he normally is when having an asthma attack, but still low enough to need a treatment. The doctor did listen to him before they gave him a treatment and he didn’t sound as bad as he should have sounded with how bad his breathing was.

After the treatment, his o2 sats were a little higher. It took the doctor a while to come in after the treatment (I think it didn’t seem as urgent since his o2 was up) and that’s when things got even worse. Judah has never been a super snuggly kid, he’s never let me hold him when he’s sleeping, even when he was a tiny baby. I can count on two fingers the times Judah has gone to sleep while I was holding him -once when he was 18 months old and had the flu and the second time was that morning in the doctor’s office after his breathing treatment.

After the nurse had come to check his o2 sats and we were waiting, Judah was sitting in the chair next to me. I asked him if he was ok and he wanted to know why I asked. I told him he looked like he was about to pass out and had to explain that passing out is kind of like going to sleep when you don’t want to. A couple of minutes later he started crying and said he felt like he was about to go to sleep but didn’t want to. I pulled him in my lap and held him and he went to sleep almost immediately.

While all this is going on, I was texting my sister, who was at the airport about to leave the country on vacation with her husband who is a CRNA. I was telling her everything that was going on and her husband was telling me what I needed to ask the doctor to do for him. I was also texting my husband telling him I was about to freak out. At that time in my life, I wasn’t much of a worrier, so when I told him I was freaking out, he got my mom to watch my daughter immediately so he could come be at the doctor with me. Meanwhile, I was three weeks post c-section and trying to figure out if I should stand up while holding Judah (and risk ripping my stitches out) to get the doctor or nurse.

The doctor came back in and Judah was still sleeping on me. I told her it wasn’t normal for him to go to sleep like that. She said it was probably because he was tired from breathing treatments all night long, but I told her he’s had to do breathing treatments all night before and still never gone to sleep on me. At that point she agreed with me that he was showing symptoms of the flu but no fever. I think she wanted to send me home, but could see that I wasn’t going anywhere until they did more for him. She decided to do some bloodwork to see if they could figure something out (which is when I texted my husband I was freaking out).

My three week old had gone with us and after they drew blood from Judah, Owen started crying because he was ready to eat. I put Judah on the exam table and gave him a couple of toys to play with, but he looked miserable. I told him he didn’t have to play with the toys and he could lie down if he wanted to. He did want to and almost as soon as he was horizontal, he was asleep. I can’t tell you how helpless I felt at that moment.

About 15-20 minutes later my husband walked in and right on his heels was the doctor. She said everything came back normal on his bloodwork, she didn’t know what was wrong with him. She said to bring him back the next day if he wasn’t better or take him to the emergency room that afternoon if he got worse. I looked at my husband and said, “we’re going to be in the emergency room this afternoon.” About that time the doctor looked at Judah asleep on the exam table and saw how he was breathing. Then she had more questions.

Was he having more accidents lately? Jared and I looked at each other as we started realizing there was a reason for some of the things we’d been going through with Judah. He was still sleeping in a pull-up and in the mornings, he would be soaked, like his pajamas would be wet from the bottom to the top. He hadn’t been having wet pull-ups and then all of a sudden, they were always soaked, but it was right before Owen was born and I had heard that kids can revert (is that the right word?) when there’s a new baby so I just assumed that was the explanation.

Was he drinking more water? Again, he was, but I just didn’t realize it. I thought it just seemed like he was asking for water more often because I was taking care of three kids now and didn’t have enough hands to do everything that needed to be done.

She said, hold on I’m going to check one more thing. She came back in with a glucose meter and checked his blood sugar and said, “Yep, he has diabetes.” Immediately I started crying and the doctor took Owen from me so I could be with Judah. I can’t remember the exact number of his blood sugar, but it was in the 380s. She told us he was in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and was going to have to go stay in the hospital for a couple of days. When Judah was laying on his back, she could see the way he was breathing and it didn’t look like asthma, it was Kussmaul breathing, which is a specific way you breathe when you are in DKA.

Woo, y’all. For some reason I’ve never written down his story before and I can feel all the feelings I was feeling that day. Judah ended up having to take an ambulance to the hospital and we were there for a few days. I’ll tell you more about that next time. Thank you so much for letting me share our story with you. And I’d love to hear from you, it could be about our story or I’d love to hear YOUR story!