Hurting Written by: Sue Cramer
"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts." ~Washington Irving
I Googled his symptoms and the page filled with one word “diabetes.” Before I knew it I was rushing to the emergency room with my 13 year old son while my husband was on the other side of the world walking the footsteps of Jesus along the dusty paths of Israel. I was a panicked mess. Josh was pale, lethargic and thin. And Josh was not a thin boy. I thought he was going through that normal stage of an awkward gangly teen but the truth was that he had lost 16 lbs in one month and was in the process of a diabetic meltdown. He was dangerously close to going into a coma. By the time we made it to the hospital his blood sugar was over 800 (normal is 80-120).
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I tried to keep myself strong in front of him but every time I was out of sight I braced myself to catch my breath and swallow hard the lump that kept building in my throat. How could this happen? No one, I mean no one in the family has had type 1 diabetes. I was scared and unsure about his future. My world, his world, had just been shattered into a million pieces. Suddenly our new normal included insulin, syringes and glucose meters. Mark wasn’t carrying a cell phone while climbing Mt. Carmel so I didn’t have an easy way to get a hold of him. Thankfully, the doctors assured me that Josh was out of immediate danger and that he would only continue to get better in the pediatric ICU over the next few days. I chose not to try and track Mark down but to wait until he called me.
Praise and Coffee | Spring 2012