At Home Now

alternateorg on September 16, 2003

I’d like to thank all of you who commented (and even those that didn’t), and I’m happy to report that all four of us will be at home tonight.

My son was released at 11:30am today and we were instructed to drive directly over the the Barbara Davis Center here in Denver. Today we learned how to take his blood sugar reading and how to admister Insulin shots. He will get 4 readings a day and 2 shots, which will be a mixture of 2 different kinds of Insulin.

He is happy, moving around, and (what I have been told is very lucky considering his condition Sunday night) shows no signs of other permanent damage (vision, kindey, etc).

We had had fears recently about his health, the possibility of Diabetes in particular, but when you’re a self-employed person who happens to make more that $34k a year, your insurance options are slim and expensive. My wife had been hoping to get a CNA job this week so that we could get insured so that we could get him tested before he got too sick. Our fear was that if he got diagnosed prior to having insurance coverage, any coverage in the future would include existing condition clauses and refuse to cover his illness. The entire time he was in the hospital, I wondered how much it would cost. I would then remind myself that not taking him would have cost him his life, which puts things into perspective. He’s worth every penny and he’s a very brave little boy to have gone through the things he went through.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that he’s safe and sound with us now, minus a few sticks in the finger and pokes in the arm a few times a day. He’s very apprehensive about these, as you’d expect a 5-year old to be who just spent 2 days in the hospital and was closer to death than I’d even like to consider.

You’d expect me to be scared and worried about this situation, but for some reason I’m not. The bill will get taken care of somehow, and my son is alive and I look forward to him turning back into the great little kid he was before he started showing signs of the disease we know now he has. Our worry and concern and fear has turned into action, responsibility and knowledge. This feels better than I’d ever known it could.

My eventful night

alternateorg on September 15, 2003

I’m only home very quickly between hospital trips right now, but since a lot of my close friends read Alternate, I thought I’d post a quick note about my night last night.

At around 4pm, my son began throwing up and acting sick. We took care of him and tried to make him comfortable. Around midnight, he couldn’t keep fluids down and couldn’t control his breathing. By 2AM his skin started turning gray and his lips blue and he still was not calming down.

My wife took him to the hospital and reported that his blood-sugar levels were in the 450 range. Normal for a boy his age is 80-150. I arrived around 3:30AM. He was quickly diagnosed with Diabetes and insulin was administered. They couldn’t get it into a vein as he was too dehydrated so they had to give it to him in a bone in his leg.

He is currently at Children’s Hospital in Denver, his glucose is almost normal and his color and condition have greatly improved. He will be fine, but he’ll be in the hospital at least until tomorrow, directly after his release, we’ll be attending 2 days worth of classes on how to admister insulin and take care of a child with Diabetes.

Your prayers and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Wacky Log Files

alternateorg on September 9, 2003

Just ran a log analysis on Alternate’s logs. And found that most of our users are on IE6, using one version of Windows or another.

Are you on Windows? If so, tell me: why the hell are you here? I can’t imagine what we offer you. Seriously, I’m not trying to be jackass, I’d just like to know.