He was always thirsty. It just seemed like he couldn’t get enough to drink; he’d no more than finish a bottle of water or soda and want another one. His parents couldn’t seem to keep enough bottled water on hand for him. Was he just looking for some extra attention?

He constantly had to go to the bathroom. His teachers weren’t going to let him out of class two or three times during the hour to use the bathroom. Nobody really has to pee that often, so I guess you can’t blame them. A couple of times he actually wet his pants on the hour-long bus ride home from school. He was so embarrassed that his parents really couldn’t tell anyone about it. But why would an eleven year old start wetting his pants? Was he looking for extra parental attention?

Sometimes he seemed really confused, sort of out of it; his eyes even looked sort of glassed over at times. We all tried to justify it for a while, after all he had always been a little air headed anyway. Maybe it was one of those things a boy goes through during puberty. We wondered if his parents should have him tested for ADHD.

I remember thinking that he doesn’t have much energy for an eleven year old. His friends are always running and riding their bikes and trying to get him to go along. He’s such a couch potato all he wants to do is play video games and lay around but he’s quite thin so I guess it won’t matter if he doesn’t get much exercise. He gets sick a lot more often than his friends, too... doesn’t he? It seems like every other month he's got strep throat or something.

Then he got really sick and started vomiting. He was hallucinating, nodding in and out of consciousness; he had dark circles under his eyes and his skin looked pasty. They thought he had the flu and started giving him Sprite to drink and he suddenly began getting worse. All of a sudden he looked like a little old man.

Her husband said let's take him to the emergency room and she said let's go. When the doctors saw the signs and checked his blood sugar, they found it to be over 500. He stayed in the hospital for over a week trying to get it under control. He slipped in and out of a coma and at times we all wondered if he was going to make it. We all felt so guilty for not recognizing the signs. They had all been there for months. He had juvenile, Type I diabetes.

Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007
special thanks to Jerad