Blood Draw

Tuesday, April 21

The girls went to Tonya's house for the day.  When she watches them, I would leave at lunch to take Ellee to preschool then go back to work and she would pick her up from school.  Dani hates this!  When I get there to pick up Ellee, she wants to go too!  She'll go to the door and try to make a run for it as soon as that door opens so that she gets to go. 

As soon as I dropped Ellee off at school and got back to work, my phone rang.  I didn't recognize the phone number and decided to let it go to voice mail.  As I was listening to it, my heart sank.  It was Dr. Beth and said that the urine sample had an excessive amount of sugar in it.  At that point the office phone rang and my boss handed me the phone, saying it was some woman.  I knew it was her trying to get a hold of me.  She suspected Diabetes but wanted us to come in right away for a blood draw.  She highly suggested pulling her out of school to come up to the hospital and doctors office.  No, not diabetes, not my kid.  At this point I had not grasped the whole concept of this or what all it would entail, all I could think is that she's very healthy and very active and how could she possibly be diabetic???  Little did I know that in a matter of 8 hours I will be completely schooled on the the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. 

I broke down.  I've worked at this job site for 6 years and I think this is the first time I've ever walked out of that gate completely consumed in tears.  I've walked out of the gate to go to the hospital to give birth to a child two hours later, but have never walked out crying.  I rehearsed my phone call to Josh in my head while walking through the parking lot and tried to calm myself down so that he'd be able to understand me.  I got in my car and as soon as I dialed his number and heard his voice, I lost it. I some how managed to choke out some rambling that I'm not sure how he was able to understand any of it but we agreed to meet at the hospital to get the blood draw done and meet with the doctor. 

 I managed to calm myself down by the time I got to school to get El.  I walked up to the door and knocked.  Mrs. McKinney came to the door and stepped outside to talk to me.  "I need to pull Elizabeth..." and I lost it again.  Why is this so hard to say outloud when I ran the conversation through my head only minutes ago?  Through my tears, I explained that I need to pull Elizabeth out to go back to the doctors for a blood test because they think she has diabetes.  She tried to calm me down and got Elizabeth to come out in the hallway.  El wasn't sure what was going on, but she wasn't feeling quite right so she didn't question what was going on. 

She had a cup that I put in her school bag. In the car she said she was thirst, but I didn't have any thing for her to drink.  We got to the hospital and I told her that when we finished getting the paperwork done for the blood draw, she could get a drink.  That took us a little while longer than I thought it would, but Josh wasn't there yet and my phone battery died so I couldn't call him.  The area we had to go to was not that far from the main doors.  They weren't ready for us because they had to wait for another nurse to come down and help.  Not a problem, that gave us a chance to walk down to the drinking fountain to fill her cup with water and to watch for Josh.  By the time we walked back to the waiting area, she would have all 6-7 oz of water gone and wanted more.  Since we didn't see Josh yet, we kept walking back and forth.  4 trips for water before he got there and before they were ready for us.  One of the nurses started to arguee with me about the type of test they were taking because it's a fasting test and she hadn't fasted.  At this point, it doesn't matter if she fasted or not, they need to get an idea of her levels now! 

The draw in itself was a major ordeal, but we got through it.  I wish they would have let me sit in the chair and hold her on my lap instead of the nurse, but we managed to get through it.  The whole time I kept flashing back to October when I was down there with both girls getting blood drawn to check lead levels because our house is over 100 years old.  For weeks Elizabeth would tell everyone about the mean needle that bit her in the arm and how much it hurt.  After I stood up and held Ellee to comfort her, I could see the tears in Josh's eyes from watching the whole thing.  I remember watching him tear up when Ellee was 5 days old and we had to take her in to get blood drawn from her feet to check her biliribon levels.  There are times when watching your child hurts you more than it hurts them, and there are times when you would give any thing to trade places to keep your child from pain.

And now, the waiting game...

First Doctor's Appointment

Monday, April 20 - Ellee's 4th Birthday

I had read in a magazine where some one had filled their child's bedroom up with a ton of balloons and how excited the child was when they woke up on their birthday and seen all these balloons. It's been a long 10-11 months since I read that till Ellee's birthday came around so that I could try it! After Josh and I had our late lunch Sunday afternoon, we went to get balloons. We ended up getting a cute little grouping of mylar balloons, one was a butterfly that said happy birthday and the others were stars in complimentary colors. I tried so hard to keep this a secret from her and surprise her, but who would have thought that balloons would be so noisy?! Needless to say, she heard me walk in her room and set the balloons down on her floor. I could tell that she wasn't quite herself, but I told her happy birthday and to go back to sleep.

I called the doctor's office to set up an appointment for her to come in. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what, so I told them that I thought that she may have a kidney or urinary tract infection and had to be there at 3:45 that afternoon. Dad was watching the girls, so I called him to let him know that I would pick her up from school. Ellee hates when I pick her up from preschool because she'd rather spend the rest of the afternoon with Grandpa or Tonya (depending on who is watching them that day).  She had a great day at school though, she got to wear a birthday crown and gave every one a cupcake for snack!  She was on top of the world for her special day and loved to tell everyone about her birthday balloons!

Sitting in the waiting room, she was back and forth between me and drawing on the chalk board. All of a sudden, she look at me with this look and says that she is going to throw up. A nurse just happened to talk through the door when she told me this and rushed us through the door to the bathroom in the back instead of going out into the hallway bathroom. Thankfully the Dr. Beth told us to go ahead and sit in one of the patient rooms instead of going back into the waiting room. Ellee did have a touch of food poisioning on Saturday (we are blaming that one on daddy!), and even though she told me a few times on Monday that she felt sick, she never did get sick.

We talked with Dr. Beth and discussed her symptoms, the excessive thirst, urination, bed wetting, sleep walking, and a few other things that we've noticed lately.  We did a urine sample which she was going to send out for testing right away.  She mentioned 4 possible things that Ellee may have - UTI, Kidney, something I never heard of, and lastley the possibility of diabetes.  She would know with in an hour if it was an infection at which point we would start antibiotics right away.  
 
We had dinner at mom and dad's house that night for Ellee's birthday.  It wasn't anything fancy, but she ate like a horse.  Infact, I can't say that I've ever seen her eat so much!  We had cake and ice cream and she opened a few presents.  The doctor's office never called back that night so I thought that "no news was good news".