When I went to the doctor’s office, I thought it’s just going to be a short checkup. I just thought I’m going to be fine; nothing is going to be wrong. And when I got there, I was fine, but then we were about to leave. Dr. Davis-Brown asked us if we had done a urine test and we said no. And she said do one when you come out the door, so we did and about five minutes later when we were in the car she called us back and she said it was an emergency and when we got there, she took us to her office, and then we did a blood sugar test. Then she asked us how fast we could get to the emergency room. And my mom said, “fast.”
Well, I said, “Could this be anything but type 1 diabetes?” And she said it really couldn’t, this is probably diabetes and you need to go to the emergency room right away.
It was supposed to be a routine check-up
When I went in for my check up with Ryan and that was August 2011. We had the checkup just like we do every year and she did all the things: Check his blood pressure, take his temperature and I am thinking to myself, “This is such a waste of time. I come and do this every year and they never find anything.” And we left the office and I thought, “Maybe I don’t even need to do these checkups” and then we get the call that his blood sugar was high.
He wasn’t showing any symptoms prior to the diagnosis. There were a couple little things, where looking back you think, “Yeah, he probably did have symptoms and I didn’t recognize them as being diabetes,” but if we hadn’t gone in for that checkup, he could have gotten very, very sick before we even realized what was going on.
Symptoms of type 1 diabetes include:
- Frequent urination
- Excessive thirst
- Unexplained weight loss
- Extreme hunger
- Sudden vision changes
- Tingling or numbness in hands or feet
- Feeling very tired frequently
- Very dry skin
- Sores that are slow to heal
- More infections that usual
Living with and understanding diabetes
When the doctor told us that he probably had type 1 diabetes, I just didn’t know what that would mean to our family. I didn’t know if it meant we would really have to rearrange our eating or our activities. I didn’t know if it meant Ryan was going to have a lot of sick days or that maybe his life would be shortened because of the illness. I just didn’t know
Dr. Davis-Brown was very nice when she was telling me. She didn’t drop it on me. She didn’t make it seem like that my life was going to end very soon. She was very nice about it. She knew what she was doing. She knew where I should have gone and she is now very helpful with my diabetes,
A sensitive, understanding physician
Dr. Davis-Brown is a mom, as well as a doctor, and I believe she has five children, and her kids are about my kids’ ages and so we kind of have a connection for that reason, in addition to the fact that she takes great care of all my kids and me when we have primary care needs, so, I really appreciate her thoroughness. I feel like nothing is routine with her. She often asks questions that I wouldn’t expect. She often looks at something from a different angle than I would predict and then when she does have bad news, like she did that day when Ryan was diagnosed, she takes it in stride.
She doesn’t drop it on you. She just says “I know this has been hard.” She spaces it out for you.
Yeah, she’s sensitive to the fact that this is a big deal. I mean, she may diagnose a lot of people with diabetes, but this was the first time we’ve been diagnosed with diabetes and so for her to be so kind and calm about it and not panicking, even though it was important that we get to the emergency room right away, there was no carrying on. It was just, “This is what you need to do; let me know how it goes.” She told us later that she had never diagnosed anyone with diabetes by accident, the way she did with Ryan. Usually, people come in with symptoms or even worse, they are taken to the hospital and put in the ICU before they’re diagnosed because their body has gotten out of control because of the disease and in Ryan’s case, that wasn’t our problem at all. Ours was caught so early and I think a lot of people discount that urine test – I don’t think I even realized what it was for until he had it that day. These are little tests that are very important and she knew that, and she took care of us.
Living with diabetes
We have a child with type 1 diabetes and we have good medical care here in Dayton. We have a wonderful primary care doctor, even though she’s not a diabetes specialist, I feel totally confident calling her with a question that doesn’t quite require an endocrinologist’s expertise, but really she can handle, she can advise, and I know she can get me the resources I need if I have questions or I need any kind of information.
A new respect for annual well checks
I think we were just so fortunate that he was diagnosed when he was because catching the diabetes early meant that we could start treating it early before anything got out of control and I think that’s one reason why he’s doing very well right now, is he never had a medical crisis, per se.
