We started in the ER for a suspected stomach flu. He couldn't keep anything down. But it was this weird shallow breathing thing that he was doing that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand. It was subtle, but there was something about it that set off the Mom radar. I knew there was something wrong.
Blood glucose levels at 500 and a dangerously low oxygen saturation rate. Diabetes Type 1 and diabetic ketoacedosis they said. The bad type of diabetes, the kind you can't reverse. An emergency transport to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and straight to the Intensive Care Unit we went.
I want to say that it was the most frightening experience of my life. But it wasn't. I did this already. He was born at 28 weeks - a micro preemie. We spent the first three months of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit. I've had my turn on the chronically ill child carousel. But nothing good or bad stays the same right?
So here we are learning to adjust to a new way a life. I have a 9-year-old with a chronic illness and a body that does not work. No matter how pretty the picture the diabetes community wants to paint me, he will never know what it is to have a completely healthy body. He is 9 freaking years old. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. The hardest moment was when he asked, about two weeks in, "hold up Mom, you mean I'm still going to have this when I'm an adult? No no no Mom, I want to take insulin and get better." I wish it worked that way kid.
I've always believed that happiness is a choice. I've raised him on, "Nico, choose happy." Life hands us all bags of good and beautiful and ugly. How well you carry those bags define you and are the difference between a happy life and one filled with bitterness and discontent. Everybody gets crap. Shake it off, get up and choose happy.
I made this layout two months before Nico got sick. I have it hung up in my scrap room now to remind me. Because there are days that I'm completely overwhelmed and I want to scream and set my damn hair on fire. There is sadness and worry and anger. But big eyes are watching me. He is oh so attuned to my attitude about this. He will be my reflection. And so - I keep getting up and choosing happy.
Because I want him to be happy.
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