Thirst

So, my diabetes story starts with thirst. Incredible thirst. My sweet little two year old daughter so thirsty that she would drink anything, anytime, anywhere; and peeing through 5-7 diapers a day, and waking soaked in urine every morning; and me knowing, knowing that this was really wrong, but not able to make myself do anything about it because I was 8 months pregnant and in the middle of a move. A my-husband-has-already-moved-and-I'm-showing-the-house-and-finding-a-new-OB-in Texas-and-mourning-the-move-away-from-friends-and-trying-to-wrap-things-up-in-Tennessee-and-I-feel-so-stressed move. I guess I was kind of wrapped up in me . . . for weeks I was terrified that my baby would be born while I was in TN and hubby was in TX. Then it got close enough to the move that I was terrified the baby would be born in the 10 hour drive down to TX. (Can you say "rural Mississippi"?) And anyway, all she was doing was drinking and peeing. We all drink and pee, right? So how bad could it be, right? But it was pretty bad. She was also, un-noticed by any of us, losing 10% of her body weight. Okay, so I did think she looked thinner, but I thought she'd just grown taller. And her eyes looked so big on her face, but why would I think that they looked so big because she had lost her sweet little baby cheeks? yeah, so I'm almost crying remembering how stupid I was not to know. How does a mother not know?

So, it began with thirst. An insatiable thirst, while her body slowly ate itself because it couldn't process her foods. And the silver lining is that even though I ignored that mom's-gut feeling for at least three weeks, we drove her in our car to Texas Children's Hospital, and she wasn't rushed there in an ambulance.