Read Online Cries from the Heart by Johann Christoph Arnold - Free Book Online

office that evening? He wanted to run another test on her.
We had noticed that something was wrong with Susanna.
She was constantly fatigued: she would play hard for a minute
or two, then flop down to rest. Did she have mono? She would
scream whenever we went on a walk. Was it behavioral? She
complained of stomach pain and her breath smelled strange. Did
she have tonsillitis or strep throat? What was going on? Whatever it was, we hoped it would pass.
But it didn’t. And now our doctor, who had seen her earlier
that afternoon, wanted us to come again, after hours. We knew
it must be something serious
.
When we got to the office,
Susanna was taken into an exam room, and our doctor came
straight to the point: “Susanna has diabetes.” Relief washed
over me. At least it wasn’t a death sentence like leukemia or osteosarcoma. I knew diabetes was serious, but being a nurse, I was
confident that it was something we could handle easily enough.
But I was wrong.
Type 1 diabetes is a condition in which the pancreas stops
producing insulin, so that blood-sugar levels go extremely high.
A diabetic patient must be given insulin injections every day, and
blood-sugar levels must be monitored several times a day to be
sure they do not go too high or too low, which could lead to seizures or loss of consciousness or even death.
Overnight, my husband and I became Susanna’s pancreas.
It’s a twenty-four-hour a day job with no vacation…Three to four
insulin injections and six to eight finger pricks daily. There are
also the complexities of her diet, and the adjustments that need
to be made each day depending on her present blood-sugar
level, her activity, and even her emotional state – all these affect
how the body uses sugar.
Susanna’s outlook is serious, as she has “brittle” diabetes.
Doctors say she has one of the most carefully supervised diet and
insulin regimens they have seen. Yet her blood-sugars range
wildly, and her overall level of control, as shown by blood tests,
remains poor. She has not yet suffered any of the typical complications of diabetes: retinal damage, poor kidney function, and
injury to the blood vessels and nerves in the legs. But we are always in a tension between keeping the blood-sugars low
enough so that long-term complications are avoided, and yet
not allowing them to drift too low. We try our best, but we know
that ten or twenty years from now, the specialists will probably
look at us and say, “You should have controlled her blood-sugars better when she was a child.”
    Of course, with seven, eight, or even nine needle pricks a day, there
is always the behavioral component to consider. Susanna has come
to accept her condition without complaint, and remains a spunky
third-grader who holds her own in a lively family with seven other
children. She loves animals, running games, and the outdoors.
    Still, it is a strain on her caregivers, because there is the constant
possibility of making a mistake. Calories must be counted carefully,
and an estimate of the nutritional value of every food item has to
be considered in light of what Susanna is doing that day. With two
types of insulin, there is the possibility of giving her an injection
from the wrong vial. Once when Becky was in Boston for a diabetes
conference, she called home to say what time she would be back.
She was told that David was on the telephone with the hospital
because he had given the wrong insulin. Such an incident may seem
insignificant, but for Susanna’s family it was hardly a small thing.
Yet that is just where they say prayer comes in.
    Becky continues:
    What do we want for Susanna? What do we pray for? Our
prayer for her is not that different from what we wish for each
one of our eight children (although for Susanna it is magnified
because of her condition): that she can lead as carefree and as
selfless a life as possible.
We have