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Finger Pricks, Insulin and Occasional Indulgences
Parenting a Diabetic Child
By Donna Verry Dee
When her daughter, Melissa, was 4, Ellen Hagarty started noticing splashes of urine around the base of her toilet. Over the next few weeks she detected that Melissa was developing an unquenchable thirst and when she began to wet her pants, Hagarty warned her to cut back on the liquids.
But the night that Melissa became hysterical in the car because she needed to pee and insisted she could not wait the five minutes it would take to get home, Hagarty knew that something was wrong. "I immediately pulled into a Taco Bell and let her go," says Hagarty. "I was hysterical at that point. I could no longer rationalize what was going on." A trip to the pediatrician confirmed what Hagarty had begun to fear – her daughter had diabetes.
Today, Melissa is a happy, active 9-year-old. Other than the six blood tests and a minimum of two insulin injections she endures each day, she is just like any other fourth-grader.
According to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, more than 13,000 children each year – 35 children a day – are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
The most commonly recognized symptom is probably excessive thirst, which is often accompanied by an urgent need to urinate. But what constitutes "excessive" and "urgent"?
According to Dr. Linda Siminerio, executive director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Diabetes Institute, parents should "have their antennae up" if they notice children making several trips to the bathroom during the night, asking to stop the car every 10 minutes to use a bathroom or drinking a liter of liquid at a sitting and being thirsty again soon afterward.