The Shock of Childhood Diabetes in the First 3 Days

No one knows better than a parent the shock you feel when your child is diagnosed with something that will forever change your life. Some parents are dealt terrible news of their child having cancer. And some are dealt the blows of illnesses that require transplants and other impairments that leave them reeling with drastic change. Diabetes is a shock that you eventually adjust to and it is not quite as traumatic than the news of cancer; however it doesn't make it any less frightening or hard to cope with the first few months and especially the first few days.

Diabetes is a chronic illness where the symptoms of the disease usually cause you to go to the doctor. Some children exhibit wetting the bed nightly and are excessively thirsty while others are much further along in their symptoms and become very sick with diabetic ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis or DKA is when someone with diabetes has extremely high blood glucose levels, a severe lack of insulin, and it results in the breakdown of body fat for energy. What begins to happen is the body literally starts eating up any fat the body has stored up for energy. Usually when a child reaches this stage they are hospitalized and are very sick. In our case we were in the symptomatic stage of diabetes before our son, Joshua, got sick and suffered from Ketoacidosis. It was a day that was such a shock and a day that carried with it great change to come.