My beautiful 2-year-old was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes after going into DKA in January 2022. After a long battle with Covid as a family of four, my husband and I noticed that our two-year-old was not getting better. In fact, she was getting worse. After soaking through her nighttime diaper for the 6th morning in a row, I picked her up from her bed, looked at my husband, and said, “she has type 1 diabetes, I can feel it.” This all happened on a Saturday, of course. So, I spent hours that day on the phone talking to doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners…trying to get anyone to take my concern seriously. No one would. Eventually I took her to urgent care, where they finally relented to a finger poke, and her blood sugar didn’t even read (she was well above 555). We raced to the hospital and our life was forever changed.
That hospital stay was traumatic, to say the least. I had to hold down my screaming 26-month-old while nurses and doctors dug needles in all four limbs trying to gain IV access before she slipped into a comatose state. I had to immediately learn a brand-new disease process in a matter of days, knowing that my understanding of this diagnosis is what will keep my child alive. I was sleeping in a twin sized hospital bed, trying not to move a muscle so that my child could actually sleep for a few hours. I was also four months postpartum with our second baby, so I was pumping every couple of hours to keep my milk supply up and produce enough so that my husband could feed our baby back at home. I barely slept; I barely ate. I cried more than I ever have. And all this while a new person came into our room every hour, on the hour, with more critical information for me to learn.
I didn’t retain much of anything during this hospital stay. I had the basics down I suppose (my background as a NICU nurse was helpful to a point), but it was all still very foreign to me. And I was essentially told: “give the insulin before she eats, have her eat a set amount of carbs, and her blood sugar will be in the range we want it to be.” Well, we quickly learned this was absolutely not the case. But we didn’t have the kind of support and education that was going to help us understand the complexities of this disease. We had to call in to the endo’s office and wait for a call back, only to be met with little to no guidance. We had PILES of papers, STACKS of books, and TONS of guides. But nothing truly helped. It was all too much. I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to read through hundreds of pages to figure out the information that was pertinent to our specific situation. My husband and I were too exhausted to read, write everything down, and filter through the medical jargon. I so desperately wanted to be able to put on a video and let someone do all the explaining for me. I wanted to hear from someone who had gone through exactly what I was currently experiencing.
So we did it. Raquel & I made a course for newly diagnosed t1d children & their families! We wrote, filmed, and produced our online video course, T1D Diagnosis: Made Simple for YOU. It contains all the necessary and important information about the basics of type 1 diabetes. Together, we sit on a couch, and talk to you like a friend would…in simple, easy to digest language that just makes sense. This course has 90+ minutes of content, 8 modules, 1 bonus module, a list of resources and discount codes that we use and love, and a simple sick day printable guide. You get forever access to this online course and you can share it with friends and family (let us be the ones who teach your friends and family, so you don’t have to!). This course is exactly what I wish I had when I got home from the hospital with my two-year-old. Get the basics of T1D down, so that you can advocate more appropriately and with more confidence for your child. This course is made for you, by people like you. We are all in this together, and you will get through this.
Listen to our Podcast: The 108 Podcast