Monday, June 6, 2011

Diabetes Confusion

We finally arrived home after being at the hospital for 8 hours!  The day was full of morning rush hour traffic, a glucose test, a crying mom and afternoon rush hour traffic all the way back home.

Andrew did beautifully during the glucose test.  Thank you all for your prayers!  He came in over 200 for the 1st. hour and 191 for the 2nd hour.  By the 5th hour, he was down in the 60's and VERY ready to eat his lunch.  Sadly, he didn't get to eat until 3:00.

By medical standards, if a person measures over 200 for the 1st and 2nd hour, they are diagnosed with diabetes.  Andrew is on the edge (only 9 points away) and is actually labeled as having glucose intolerance (pre-diabetes) for the time being.

He definitely does have type 1 and is in the honeymoon period.  Here's where it gets tricky:

Andrew's A1C was 5.0. I am so proud of him!  The endo. wants to start him on Metformin (Glucophage) to give his pancreas a rest.  There is no data to back up whether or not keeping a person on a little insulin or oral medication really helps to prolong the honeymoon period.  Metformin is approved for children 10 and over.  He is only 9, so that option is out for me.  If he is doing fine with diet control, why do we have to do anything???

I asked the endo. if she would be open to natural medicine until he would need insulin.    That definitely did not go well.  I started crying out of frustration, sadness and anger.  I was frustrated because she stated that he won't be off of insulin for long.  Our previous endo. told me that and here we are 6 months after diagnosis still off of insulin.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely know that he will be dependent on insulin in the future, but I want to prolong this stretch for as long as I possibly can and as naturally as I can.

I felt so much sadness looking at my son lying in that hospital bed with an IV in his arm completely unaware that there is a battle going on inside his body to completely destroy his pancreas.  Just being in that hospital dealing with his diabetes brought back so many feelings from his original diagnosis day.

The endo. thought I was crying because Andrew had to go back on insulin.  If she only could have seen what was actually going on inside my head.

So, now I have a dilemma......Do I intervene with adding insulin now or wait until his A1C or daily blood glucose numbers start to rise? I have to wait until I get his c-peptide and insulin levels back to make a final decision. In the meantime, I'll place my trust in the Lord to direct us.  A diabetic honeymoon definitely does not live up to its fun sounding name.
  

4 comments:

  1. You're right. It's no honeymoon.

    Good luck with the decisions ahead of you.

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  2. I think you are doing an amazing job controlling his numbers with diet...I say keep it up for as long as you can! If he doesn't need the meds or the insulin, why in the world would they insist?
    Yes, he'll need it in the future, but until then, if what you are doing is working, why change it?
    Go with your gut, trust what God is leading you to do!

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  3. Thanks for updating us. I was thinking about you. AND...he has been having lows without insulin...right? What did the MD say about that? Seems like it will be a rough go with insulin in the mix right now. No?

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  4. Denise - I'm with your thinking. It just seems common sense to me.

    Reyna - He was having lows. The doctor wanted to see if he could have had an insulin irregularity. I guess sometimes people can release their insulin late resulting in lows. It ended up not being his case. I honestly still didn't get an answer to why his is getting lows.

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