Should I be worried??

amother

Fri, Apr 08 2011, 2:18 pm

Dh has type I diabetes (he's had it since he was 10)

I've had all my kids checked for insulin antibodies which my dr said would predict whether they would become diabetic in the fututre or not. B'H everything came back negative.

4yo DS has always been on the sort of chubby side (not really chubby, just way bigger then his peers, but his height was off the charts almost as much as his weight so the dr said it was nothing to worry about. He has the same body type as dh) He also has these almost invisible darker marks on his necks which I know has something to do with sugar or diabetes or the pancreas. (can't remember which) but they're so light I'm not sure if it's just a tan line...

Last week they called me from school to say he had peed like 4 times in his pants within an hour (which is unusual for him. He's been potty trained for almost 2 years) And when they asked him he said he couldn't stop it. He also hadn't had too much to drink during that time.

So I went to pick him up and he was sweating cold (like dh does when he has hypoglycemia) and was walking sort of crooked. He didn't look too good...

By the time we got home he was fine (I didn't give him anything to eat or drink in the car) and he hasn't had that happen since.

Dh says it's a fluke. I kept asking him to check DSs sugar to see. But he refuses.

I don't know what to do. Of course if he has diabetes C"V I would be devastated. But if he does have it, it needs to be taken care of NOW. I don't even want to google his symptoms... I am sort of panicking...

Kayza

Fri, Apr 08 2011, 3:38 pm

DOn't you think your husband is aware of the potential seriousness of the situation? I would also expect that he is far more aware of what the onset of juvenile diabetes looks like.

On the one hand, you have no real reason to think that the child is likely to have diabetes - big and chubby are not the same thing, and from what you describe he is big, not chubby. Even chubby is not much of an indicator, but being big is simply meaningless in this context. The marks you are seeing are also meaningless. The markers that generally exist in children at high risk for diabetes are not there.

On the other hand, the symptoms you describe could be from many things. So, for starters you have very little reason to think this is diabetes.

Having said that I would also point something else out. Diabetic symptoms do NOT go away by themselves. If your son had been having a hypoglycemic attack, there is NO WAY he would have snapped back on his own - it's simply not possible. In fact, he would probably have been / looked considerably worse. In addition, diabetes is systemic, which means that you are going to see a pattern - a one time event of any sort is simply meaningless.

I'm betting your son had a transient fever (or a really bad scare that he didn't tell anyone about), which could easily create the kind of thing you describe.

amother

Sat, Apr 09 2011, 6:57 pm

Kayza wrote:

Thank you for posting this. It's exactly the reassurance I needed...

He's due for a checkup anyways, so I will bring it up, but a lot of what you say made a lot of sense. Thanks.