WelcomeWe Hope, We Pray, We Dream ... that one day a cure will be found
Hello and welcome to the page dedicated to providing you with some information so that you know what Ethan and all of the other people who have been diagnosed with Type 1 "Juvenile" Diabetes go through. We hope that this information allows you to become more informed about this disease.
Our Hero - "ETHAN"
Ethan's Diagnosis Story
Ethan was diagnosed with Type 1 "Juvenile" diabetes on February 6, 2009. The week of Ethan's diagnosis was an extreme roller coaster. It went from excitement to joy to fear to relief to heartbreak.
The week started when Ethan's little sister, Breleigh, was born on Saturday, January 31st. There was much excitement surrounding the birth of his third little sister, he loves being a big brother. Everything went well, so on Monday, Ethan along with his dad and two other sisters brought his mom and baby sister home from the hospital. Ethan was very glad to have them both home.
Then a bit of fear set in. Two days after bringing his mom and Breleigh home from the hospital, his mom was taken to the Emergency Room because she was experiencing shortness of breath. At the time, the doctor's thought that it could be a blood clot following the delivery. While in the ER, several tests were run to try and determine the cause of her shortness of breath. Relief set in when all of the tests came back good and Ethan's mom was brought home from the Emergency Room very early Thursday morning. As awful as it may sound, this trip to the Emergency Room was actually a blessing in disguise. Because of the tests that were needed to be done on his mom, his baby sister was not able to breast feed for three days and she was put on formula.
On Friday night, a call to the pediatrician to ask questions about his little sister turned into a night that will be remembered forever. This is when the true heartbreak came in. While talking to the pediatrician, it was brought up that Ethan was up again going to the bathroom, this was like the 5th time in an hour that he had gotten up. The pediatrician said it was probably one of two things. First possibility was that he was just very excited about his baby sister and the second thing was that it could be diabetes. Ethan's pediatrician is also a family friend and she happened to be going out to run an errand. She offered to stop by our house with a test strip to check his urine. She asked us to grab a sample the next time he got up to use the bathroom. It didn't take long for Ethan to get out of bed to have to use the bathroom. When the pediatrician arrived at our house, Ethan's dad led the pediatrician to the bathroom to test his urine. With one quick glance at the test strip, his pediatrician said he has a lot of sugar in his urine, you need to take him to the Emergency Room at Children's Hospital first thing tomorrow morning. Our hearts dropped to the floor. WOW, what a shocker!! There is no way to prepare for this type of a moment. Without that trip to the ER and Breleigh being put on formula, which generated the call to the pediatrician, we have no idea how long we would have gone without knowing about Ethan's disease. We were extremely lucky to have found it when we did. With us detecting it when we did, it prevented Ethan from being hospitalized overnight to be on fluids. He also did not go into DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis) and we are extremely thankful for that.
Ethan's blood sugar reading in the ER that morning were over 500. Ethan was put on IV fluids right away and had quite a bit of blood drawn to confirm the diagnosis. While at in the Emergency Room at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Ethan had an excellent nurse named Jim. He made Ethan feel very comfortable in such an uncomfortable situation. Ethan spent all of Saturday morning receiving fluids and was given his first shot of insulin to get him through the night. We then had to come back on Sunday morning for the same routine.
more to come...
