Second Doctors Appointment

Tuesday, April 21

After her draw, we went up stairs to the doctor's office. We waited in the waiting room briefly, then they took us back to one of the larger rooms to wait for the results of the blood test. We were hoping to meet with Dr. Steve but it was mentioned earlier that he is on call for the night and didn't get in till 4. A nurse came in and took Ellee's stats and left.

We were both on pins and needles waiting for a doctor to come in. We had no idea what all this would entail or what would happen next. Poor Ellee was so tired that she curled up on Josh's lap and fell asleep against his chest.

After a while, Dr. Mary came in to see us. "Elizabeth is Type 1 Diabetic and right now her glucose levels are sky high. You need to decide what hospital and Endocrynologist you want to use so that she can be admited as soon as possible." Those are some of the hardest words a parent can ever hear. An Endo-what??? Dr. Mary was very wonderful with explaining our options. The bad news is that the only Endo in town mainly deals with adults, not children. Now we have to decide what Children's Hospital we want to go to. Josh laid Ellee on the examining table since she was still sleeping. They brought in maps to the closest Childrens along with where their satelite offices were and left us to decide what we want to do. Josh got on the phone to call work to find out which Endos were in our network and the whole time I'm still trying to figure out how to pronounce it!

Dr. Steve came in to check on us. I think he was filled in ahead of time on Ellee's condition since he'd have to deal with us tonight. He explained that we needed to admit her as soon as possible to get her hooked up to an IV to get all of that excess sugar flushed out of her system. We all agreed that it would be best to admit her to Lima Memorial to get every thing started, then have her transfered to Childrens in Columbus after they verified that they had a bed ready for her. Knowing how much an abulance ride costs after my two rides last year, I wasn't excited about seeing that bill, but at this point, it was the least of our worries!

Josh and I had to decide who was going to stay at the hospital with her, what to do with Dani, and what seemed like a thousand other things that needed dealt with to get us through the week. Luckily, my boss assured me not to worry about work and that they would get every thing taken care of for how ever long I needed to be gone. We decided that I would stay with her at the hospital and he would get Dani and pack clothes for us. I wanted to go to the library to get books and read up on all of this over the next few days, so he went with them to admit her to LMH while I was gone.

This was definitly the hardest phone call I ever had to make. On the way to the library, I called mom. "Is dad there too?" "No, he's up at Jason's." Oh, I was hoping to have them put me on speaker phone so that I could explain it to both. "Sit down... Ellee has Type 1 Diabetes and needs to be admitted to the hospital". We both bawled through that conversation. I don't really remember the rest of it except for asking if they could take Dani while we were in Columbus.

Why are there so few books on this subject? And as I soon found out, so many books lump Type 1 and Type 2 together, when they are almost opposite. One book that I picked up that ended up being the best one was a book "How to Parent a Child with Diabetes" by Gloria (don't remember the last name). I ended up getting all the techinical information I could handle (plus more) from the nurses in Columbus, but this book was from a mother's view. Armed with 5 books, I headed back to the hospital to start this new path of our lives.