"This isn't very pleasant, but I imagine you'll get used to it. You'll be doing this yourself, four or five times a day."
The emergency room nurse takes a finger-stick blood sugar reading from my 13-year-old. He's already had an IV insertion and blood sample taken, and been either too brave or too sick to react, but he jumps at the glucometer's prick.
I realize right away she's talking about diabetes - it's been in my mind, after all, since the middle of the night, and it's now mid-morning. I wonder what Aaron makes of her comment, and feel a flare of anger. Is this how you tell a kid he has a lifelong disease, with an off-hand comment while you punch a hole in his skin?
He gets it, all right. He lies back on the gurney, too exhausted to really cry, with tears leaking down the sides of his face. If only I could kick him out of the bed, lie down in his place, hook the IV into my own hand. He's just a kid, eager to try his teenage wings. He shouldn't have to deal with this.
Everything has happened too fast. With something this serious, you imagine a series of tests, a solemn consultation in a doctor's office. Instead, with a single blood sugar reading, everyone in emerg knows what's up.
Up until last night, we thought Aaron had a simple ear infection and a sore throat. But then he got up to pee three times in three hours. By dawn, he was vomiting and the skin was drawn over his cheekbones and smudged under his eyes. And he was tired - really, really tired. I have never seen a kid so wiped.
The doctor who comes to see us has launched into a reassuring talk about advances in treatment and the flexibility today's kids have with their diets. I have to interrupt him to ask, "Is this diagnosis certain?" Nobody has actually said, in plain words, "Your son has diabetes."
He smiles apologetically. I suppose it is so obvious to the staff that they all assume we've been told.
"I'd like to be able to say no," he says. "But, yeah, it's for sure."
For the next 24 hours, adrenalin and anxiety make everything surreal. My head buzzes like a bad fluorescent light. It's hard to focus my eyes on the handouts we are given - and when I do, each new bit of information (like the drawing of a kid's body chopped into tiny little squares, each a good spot for injecting insulin, thousands and thousands of needles over a lifetime) seems to make me cry.
Enough food for a linebacker
There are bright spots - and the brightest is how fast Aaron feels better. By late morning, he's sitting up in bed, the colour back in his cheeks. At dinnertime, they wheel in enough food for a linebacker. I look at the mounds of potatoes and frozen peas, two slabs of roast pork with gravy and milk and buns, and my heart sinks. Aaron doesn't like milk or frozen peas, and to a sick kid the sheer quantity must be nauseating. Am I wrong. He tucks in like a starving man - which is, in fact, pretty much what he is. (Without insulin to process the carbohydrates, the body can use only fat and protein.) I watch him shovel in peas and chase them with two cartons of milk and marvel. "New diabetics are usually pretty hungry," observes our doctor.
Aaron's older cousin phones him that evening. It turns out her boyfriend, Jameson, has diabetes, and she regales Aaron with stories of the "bad" things he eats and the day he didn't realize his blood sugar was too low until his handwriting went all shaky. She laughs about how funny it looked. He hangs up feeling a lot less fragile. "Keegan's phone call was great," he remembers. "To be able to joke around about it, it made me feel more normal."
