I guess I will start from the beginning of it all.
We went to Great Wolf Lodge over Coles birthday in November. There is when I noticed she was starting to thin out. When we went to my parents house for Thanksgiving and my dad (should have been a red flag right there) noticed that she had lost weight, too. But she was eating constantly so I thought nothing of it.
She kept getting thinner. People started to comment. Those who couldn't narrow it down to weight loss would ask if she was tired. She would always reply that she was "good". Her teacher, Linda Cashman tracked me down at the school Christmas performance and asked about it. At that point I had been weighing her. I knew she was around mid-60's. She was about 56 pounds mid-December. Soon enough she was 55, then 54. I told myself if she got to 53 then I would take her in. She was eating me out of house and home, so it didn't make sense. But still, I wasn't too worried.
On Christmas Eve my SIL, Lisa had come over to prep food for out get-together. She took one look at Lydia and told me to get her to the doc. She started asking me more questions about Lydia's behavior and mentioned that the first thing they would cross off the list would be juvenile diabetes. My first thought was, diabetes is better than allergies- at least she could still eat whatever. Which is true, but I had no idea what it really entailed.
Lisa started asking if she was thirsty a lot. She was thirsty some days more than normal, but not everyday. She asked if she was eating a lot--yes, yes she was. She asked if she had abdominal pain. Which yes, she would get that randomly.
So that night Jeromy and I looked up type 1 diabetes (thanks to Lisa) and she pretty much crossed off every thing. But it was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the next day- so we just enjoyed our time, knowing in the back of our minds life was about to change. There's this sweet video of Lydia making Jake laugh- where life was just perfect in that moment. Oh how I want to go back to that sweet Christmas Day- instead of the he**we went through 2 days later.
Christmas Day was on Friday. On Saturday- Andy's family who was in town ended up coming up to the farm that day and played in the snow. It was crazy cold. That night Lisa had texted us asking to meet up with her in Wenatchee to take Lydia's blood. We decided to. I also saw as a symptom for type 1 was a yeast infection. So I asked Lydia that night before she went to bed if she was having symptoms. She said yes. That kind of freaked us out. Another thing on the list.
When we got up the next morning and getting ready for church, we had Lydia weigh herself and she was 50 pounds. She had lost several pounds in a matter of days! That's when I freaked out. She put on her church dress and it fit her so differently, she looked so sick. And all this time she would say that she was doing "good". Lisa had mentioned that we might want to pack a bag for Lydia- just in case- her blood numbers weren't good. So she had a bag packed. But after we weighted her before we left, I was certain no matter what her numbers were, she needed to go to the ER.
When Jeromy met up with Lisa (I was teaching my Sunday School class) and her number was 323. So he came to pick me up- we went in the church for a minute to give Lydia a blessing. Brother Richter, Brother Howe, Papa Riggs and Jeromy administered it. Then we headed to the ER.
Her blood test at the ER was 250 or something. They pricked her and took her blood. They basically said she needs to go to Seattle Childrens. They got everything ready. We brought her into the ER around 11am, she left in the ambulance around 3pm and got to Seattle around 7:30pm. Jeromy went with her in the ambulance while "lucky me" got to go home pack everybody's bags then deliver Carter and Cole to Aaron and Lisa's house. I stayed the night there and headed to Seattle the next morning with Jake.
Jeromy would send me text updates on her blood sugars. I swear the gal in the ambulance pricked her every 20 minutes for 4 hours! I wanted to hurt her! Poor Lydia's fingers had bruises on the tips from all the pricks.
I got there on Monday afternoon. I missed the first couple training classes. We were there three days learning and being trained on how to take care of Lydia. Lucky me started getting sick on Tuesday and was very sick on Wednesday. I wanted to die. I'm sure the stress of it all made it worse. My mom was diagnosed with pneumonia, so that's probably what I had. I ended up being sick for a good two weeks, too. Ugh. But I shouldn't complain I'm not the one who was diagnosed with a chronic disease.
Here's Jakey. He didn't sleep a wink.
