Question

Recently, a friend of mine attended the funeral of one of her former students.  The little girl died of diabetes.  Her parents thought she had the flu.  They didn’t take her to the doctor.  She went into a coma at night and never woke up. my heart goes out to her parents.  their pain is unimaginable. my question is: is there any way to tell when child has diabetes when there has been no other sign or warning?  This little girl got sick on the weekend and was dead on Tuesday. our health insurance put out a very slick book about when you should and shouldn’t take your child to the doctor.  It’s designed to keep costs down.  Even our pediatricians office has a similar booklet for parents. I usually take the wait and see road, myself, when either I, or my children are sick.  now, though, I’m not waiting for anything.  I’m scared. does any one know the symptoms of the onset of juvenile diabetes?

Answer

My mom has seen various friends of my brothers’ come down with juvenile diabetes, and after the first one, she suspected it well before the kids’ mother did. what she noticed was an incredible thirst, like downing 3 consecutive glasses of milk. The reason for this is that sugar in the blood rises and rises (as the pancreas cannot make insulin to keep up with this normal occurrence), and the reaction is to get thirsty in an attempt to dilute the sugar. of course, water would help (maybe), but juice or milk simply increases the blood sugar further, so the problem is exacerbated. With diligence and education, it is possible to live a long and healthy life with juvenile-onset diabetes, even though the body produces absolutely no insulin (unlike adult-onset diabetes, where pancreatic function is impaired to varying degrees).

Associated Juvenile Diabetes Symptoms Question: In responce to Aleta’s request of juvenile diabetes symptoms. Frequent urination, no energy, weight loss are the most common symptoms. I’m not suprised that it wasn’t caught in time, many doctors seem to think everytime a kid is ill that he/she has a cold and do nothing about it. I was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes in 1966 at the age of 5. it took them a while to figure out what was wrong with me and as a result I slipped into a coma. my parents didn’t have any idea, I guess parents don’t famaliarize themselves with the condition if its never struck a family member before. The Canadian Diabetic Association have an active ad campaign right now that state over half of the countries diabetics don’t even know they have the disease. In this add they give out some of the common symptoms. This is probably why diabetes is still up in the top five for leading cause of death. many don’t even know they have it.

• Answer: The same with my parents.  I wasn’t complaining about anything, and so I had about 6 weeks of onset before they took me to a hospital one night about midnight.  I was 15. Symptoms over the past month included:  greatly reduced grades at school — from 4.0 to 2.0 work;  radically changing vision (i.e. day to day, my optometrist missed it, and apoligised later for not realizing that the vision chance was because of diabetis); and of course the request urination and thrist. Once at the hospital, I was so dehydrated that it took a couple tries to get a needle into my arm.  OTAH, they diagnosed me in about an hour.  I agree with Scott — parents don’t think that such diseases will hit their children if there is no family history, and we were all quite blind to the symptoms that were indicating that _something_ was  wrong until I was almost in a coma.