Thursday, January 12, 2012

Memories and lessons learned

There are many things about Emma's diagnosis that really stick in my mind...things that I will never forget for the rest of my life I am sure. Many of them I would like to be able to erase if I could...and yet there are also many that I am glad to have imprinted there forever. Those particular ones are not necessarily good moments or happy moments only. They are also moments that broke my heart. They are moments that taught me something. Moments that were like a slap in the face to me to wake up and see what was truly going on around me.
One particular moment that I will never forget is the day I took Emma to our family doctor to find out why she was constantly going to the bathroom. I thought that possibly she had a bladder infection or something of the sort and it would be a simple in and out visit...leaving within minutes holding onto a prescription and making my way to the pharmacy. Well, the night before I went there I had been speaking to my Mom on the phone and she had kind of mentioned to me that the frequent urination and constant thirst were actually signs of diabetes. I kind of blew it off as ridiculous at the time to be honest. There was no way that MY baby could have a disease. I mean she was perfectly fine...playing, walking around, laughing...nothing was wrong.
So, there we were sitting in the doctor's office and I was telling her about Emma's symptoms. She was typing away on the computer and asking questions. The conversation I had with my Mom was nagging me...like a constant jab in the back of my head...so I offhandedly brought it up. I mentioned it to the doctor and she immediately said to me, "No...it's not diabetes, if it was diabetes she would be really sick too!"........so began my journey of not trusting the medical profession I think. All it would have taken was a 5 second finger poke to confirm if she was diabetic or not. Regardless of what she had eaten in the past 12 hours...if she was diabetic, her blood sugar would have been abnormally elevated.

All it would have taken was a finger poke.

Instead I was given one day of false hope. One last day to believe that there was nothing serious going on inside my daughter's body. I will never understand why it is not a requirement to ensure that every single doctor's office has a blood sugar meter. I guarantee that so many children's lives could be saved by simply having this meter in the doctor's offices. If a patient comes in showing any of the signs of diabetes...a doctor should take the meter out and test...right then...right there.

I can't even describe the difficulty that I have going in to see this same family doctor for whatever reason since that day...since she uttered those words to me, "No...it's not diabetes..." I always have that doubt in my head screaming at me whenever I take Emma there for even the most common of things like an ear infection or a sore throat. I always wonder...I hear the echo of that memory in my mind and I doubt. Sometimes bad memories are horrible and need to be forgotten..erased...and moved on from. Sometimes bad memories teach us something...they are horrible to go through and yet they turn out to be a good thing at the same time. Had it not been for this particular bad memory, I would have gone the rest of my life putting my full 100% trust and belief in every single medical professional I came across. I would have been naive...and the world is a scary place when you are too naive.

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