Gratitude Project: Frederick Banting and a few poorly puppies...

In a world without good Canadian doctors like Frederick Banting and his team - life for my family would be very different....scary different.

In 1921 Dr.Frederick Banting and his team of doctors and chemists, discovered a hormone called insulin by testing the pancreas's of diabetic dogs. Insulin -- a hormone that our family now spends hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds?) of dollars a year on, to support the 2 Diabetics living in my home.

My husband was diagnosed with T1D in 1989, at age twelve, in Boston, MA. His journey was not an easy one. The many changes in blood sugar testing and regulation of that time paired with living in a country that did not provide the kind of medical support we get in Canada created an expensive and tiring life for him and his family. Thanks to all the advances and moving to this beautiful place, things are completely turned around for how he manages this disease. (Another note of gratitude!)

Fast forward 28 years, and our sweet, seven-year old son started showing all the awful symptoms of Diabetes and shortly after, was also diagnosed with T1D. (A little harder to find gratitude here...)

This rocked my world, shook me to my core (and any other cliche statement that illustrates devastation...). Part of me wondered, I would venture to say that even a very small part of me knew that when we were experiencing the telling symptoms of Diabetes, that it was in fact, going to be the very thing we dreaded since we first found out we were pregnant. 

(I won't get into the fact that our OB/GYN told us 100% that this baby would not have Diabetes because it doesn't explicitly pass down from parent to child. For that reason, we doubted it being the big D from the beginning...slightly massive letdown.)

Our boy lost 11 pounds in just over a month, started wetting the bed out of no where (this from a boy who potty trained in 2 days while we were in Nashville, TN at age 2 and hadn't had an accident since), became ravenously thirsty 24 hours a day and... I could go on. He hadn't truly smiled in weeks. He was exhausted, but no one knew why. His collarbones were popping so far out of his little neck that he thought they were going to snap. 

The symptoms were confusing and scary, but gradual and almost "gentle" in a way that made it hard to realize how serious things had become.

ENTER INSULIN.

After leaving several doctors appointments, unsatisfied with answers like "growth spurt" and "bedwetter" - we finally pushed and got referred to a paediatrician, who, after hearing the symptoms, gently suggested a quick blood test that next morning.

Cut to 11 missed calls from the hospital while I worked that day and me finally answering the phone, to have our new paediatrician say "Valerie...you need to wake your son up and bring him to the hopsital NOW. His blood sugar is critical high and...I didn't want to say this over the phone...but we strongly suspect it is Diabetes".

Shock.

Tears.

Panic.

Worry.

Worry.

Worry.

A quiet whispered update to my husband, asking him to be calm for me.

And then running.

Running over to my parents house.

Slamming the door behind me.

Crying into their arms.

"They...they think...THEY THINK JAKE HAS DIABETES...I...I have to go NOW...we have to go now."

. . .

Everyone was so quiet and so reassuring that everything would be fine. Jake, although skinny as a whip, thirsty and slightly confused, was fine. He was so lifeless, now that I look back. Normally a rushed trip to the emergency room in the night, with a crying mom and every other family member that can fit in the car along with us, would worry him - but that night, the elevated blood sugar had taken so much from him that he hardly flinched at the ordeal.

I kept thinking: "I should have known".

But the grace of God and the strength of my family kept me from thinking it too often.

And then, like I said...and thanks to Frederick Banting and a few poorly pups in the 1920's...ENTER INSULIN.

Within minutes he was given insulin and the life slowly came back to him.

It was magic. 

(...Who am I kidding...it was hell on earth watching my child be injected with something so foreign)

But it was magic.

It was healing. 

It was helping.

It was WORKING.

Here are 2 photos.

The first one...I hate. Truly.

It is his perfect face but, I almost don't even see him in it.

The second...is after 1 day with insulin in his system.

Day 1

Day 2

--------

Life changing, Dr.Banting. Life changing.

I get teary when I read of the first people who were treated with insulin.

"Witnesses to the first people ever to be treated with insulin saw "one of the genuine miracles of modern medicine," says the author of a book charting its discovery.1

Starved and sometimes comatose patients with diabetes would return to life after receiving insulin.

Ultimately, the first medical success was with a boy with type 1 diabetes - 14-year-old Leonard Thompson - who was successfully treated in 1922. Close to death before treatment, Leonard bounced back to life with the insulin. "

Can you imagine his mother??

Her son, close to death, with a disease that had killed countless others, with no help in sight (or in history)...simply "bouncing back to life" with the treatment of insulin.

So, thank you, Frederick Banting. 

You saved my guys 

You saved so many others.

You took a death sentence and turned it into a manageable disease.

You pressed on in your research and changed the world.

...and this mama is ever grateful.

xoxo,

Love from,