A Little More of the Story

Vince and I have been thinking a lot about his diagnosis lately. Mostly due to a reader of my blog that brought Neonatal Diabetes to our attention. Apparently Neonatal Diabetes is a rare form of the disease that affects small infants and is a gene mutation instead of an autoimmune disorder. So Vince starting asking his family what exactly happened back in 1980, the year he was born. Apparently when he was 6 months old, he got strep throat. He was sick for weeks and just couldn’t seem to get better, even with antibiotics. Then one day he started peeing, A LOT. That is when his mom knew exactly what was wrong. Unfortunately, by the time she realized he was this sick, he had passed out. They rushed him to the Children’s Hospital and he was in a coma. That was the day they knew he had developed Type 1 Diabetes like his older half brother. The only difference was their ages. His brother developed it about 15 years earlier at the age of 6. Vince was only 6 months old. Just an innocent little baby whose pancreas decided to abandon him. Luckily, they got him medical help in time and were able to stabilize him. That was the start of his life of 31 years with this horrible disease. Because we are talking about 1980, there was not the testing that there is today, let alone the knowledge of something like Neonatal Diabetes. I do not however think that Vince has this rare form of the disease since he was sick beforehand. That is more characteristic of a “regular” Type 1 from what I have read. Regardless, it leaves us to handle the sugars, pumping, nerve pain, and loss of vision today.