The Wake-up Call

I’ve been away from my blog for a good month now. Only, I wouldn’t consider it a good month.

On July 21, I was awakened by my son. Most mornings he wakes up talking and can be heard from any room in the house, his voice unusually deep for 12 years old.

This morning was different. He said nothing. He simply pulled on my arm.

It was earlier than usual. I splashed cold water on my face as he sat at the edge of my tub. As I turned to him, his gaze was distant. Before I could ask him what was wrong, his eyes rolled back. His body fell straight back into the tub and shook violently.

I knew right away this was a diabetic seizure. His first.

There I was. Overtaken by fear, thrust into action like an ER doctor with no training.

Don and Ally heard my screaming and raced to help. I fumbled with the glucagon shot, struggling to recall the one time I practiced with it. In that moment, time seemed to drag on, like trying to sprint through deep water. In and out I plunged the liquid into the vial, my hands shaking. Into Jack’s thigh it went easing the trembling in his limbs.

I rode in the ambulance and held him, sobbing as he fought to be set free from the straps that held him down. I was flooded with guilt. This was my fault.

After six years of staying up late to check him -- six years of living and breathing this unpredictable disease -- I fell asleep on the job. Literally.

I checked his glucometer. There was the evidence. He went to bed low, his blood glucose reading at 72. Without a snack to bring him back up.

How did I let this happen?

Just a few weeks before, I was among a group of parents listening to an endocrinologist speak frankly at diabetes camp. He said, “When I see one of my patients end up in ER, I know that someone was responsible for this. You cannot ever take a night off. You have to be on the job at all times.”

No one had ever issued such a warning. He was harsh, I thought, but he was right.

People say to me all the time, “You’re so strong.”

I want to say, “How would you be if this was your child?”

This is a sink-or-swim situation. You either educate yourself on the caring of your child with this disease or he could die. Those are the choices.

And here I was, educated about my son’s disease, and we still almost lost him. All it takes is one time. One moment of human frailty.

By the afternoon of the seizure, Jack was lucid and hungry and had little memory of the morning’s ordeal. I told him I’d make him whatever meal he wanted.

“I’ll have madras lentils, brown rice and a soy smoothie,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go to Burger King and get you a Whopper?”

“Nope,” he said with a smile.

There was that smile. After the morning’s trauma and a brush with death, there it was the way the sun sometimes breaks through a stormy sky.

My eyes were wet with tears that whole week. He stopped to hug me and said, “Mom, it’s okay. I’m just so happy to be alive.”

The old sage that resides within my son comes through once again. Every day he shows me the power of resilience. The ability to shift your perspective from all that is wrong to all that is right. He knows he has all that a kid needs: an overabundance of love. And with that at your back, you carry on.