Before I even bounced from the hospital, the staff had made an appointment at the Markham Stouffville Pediatric Diabetes Clinic for me. I thought it was just to get out of the hospital as I know their role on the pediatric floor is just to get me better so I can leave there.
The Clinic are the ones who help me make my way through figuring out how to deal with my type 1 diabetes. Let me start by saying how awesome my new “team” is. I have four new main people in my life, a nurse who specializes in kids with diabetes named Holly, a dietician who specializes in eating healthy for type 1 diabetes, named Jo, a social worker who can help me wrap my head around why I have to deal with diabetes and asks me questions about how things are going in my life outside of the obvious needles named Paige, and of course my endocrinologist Dr. Coles.
Dr. Coles or all endocrinologists specialize in the endocrine system, which are the parts of your body made up of glands that produce hormones. Hormones are the body's messenger system. They go around telling cells what to do. I’m sure Dr. Coles could tell you more but that's pretty much all you need to know.
So along with my family, both my two younger brothers and older sister and my parents taking on new roles and responsibilities, these four people are going to help me live with type 1 diabetes while I’m young. Most likely if you are in Canada too, the first step on the road to dealing with diabetes will be meeting with an Endocrinologist, and if you're lucky you too will get a medical team of people like Holly, Jo, Paige and Dr. Coles.
At our first meeting they took the time to get to know me a bit better, asked me all kinds of questions, and then gave me some details about how the next few months were going to go. I told you before I got hit with a lot of info. This visit we slowed it down and looked at things like food and how to manage my insulin shots.
Best of all they told me not to worry if things weren’t going smoothly. It turns out that getting your insulin dosage at correct levels is part science and part guesswork. They told me where we were going to start but that I should expect that getting my blood sugars in the “desired range” was going to take a little time and not to get frustrated with it. And that is ok, because just about everyone else has the same start.
So that is my type 1 diabetes team. If you’re lucky your team is half as good as mine!
Until next time!