The trip home from CHEO

NORTH BAY – Health (Special to NNL) – It took this long to do what she wanted to do a few days after she was diagnosed.

Kyleigh’s story with Type 1 Diabetes started December 5th, when I took her in to emergency at the NB Regional Hospital. There are so many details of what happened that night; but the gist is – less than 5 minutes after she was accessed, I was told she is diabetic. If you can imagine having your child yell to you – “Mom, help me……” while a needle was inserted into her she was told was going to hurt, that is what she went through.

Why am I telling you this story – her story?

The most simple of answers is – she wants to.

Last night…again, I asked her why it is important. Her answer….has not changed from the first time we came home on the bus from Ottawa a few days after she was medivaced from here (North Bay).

Last night, while I was putting her to bed, I asked her the reason why. She just wants people to know what diabetes is and how it affects the children that have it. She tells me of what the kids thought in her school shortly after she started going back to school, about how they thought she had cancer and how she had to tell them that she did not.

So, I am telling her story for her.

The picture – I did not have a camera then (I still don’t…lol) so I used my laptop to take a picture of her.

The lady responsible for the travel arrangements asked me how we wanted to go home. I told her that we will go home by bus. That is 5 hours by bus from Ottawa to North Bay (I think anyhow). I figured..you know, life should go by as normal as possible as soon as possible and we…travel mostly by bus when we go somewhere. So, bus it was.

Kyleigh has very quiet the whole time. She just sat there and looked out the window. I just let her be…knowing that she needed her time…time to think things over. For people that know my daughter, she can be a chatterbox…non stop story after story question after question. Well, that was before the Ipad 🙂 Finally, before we got to Deep River, I asked her…what was she thinking? It seems she was afraid and was trying to sort out in her mind what happened to her and try to make sense of it all. She must have been thinking of so many other things but that is what came out when I asked her. At the time, she wanted to use what happened to her to raise funds during Christmas for what CHEO needed – toys for the kids room and equipment for the nurses (because at one point one of the nurses mentioned that a certain piece of equipment was not working). You know…for something good to come out of her experience.

It did not happen because I did not make it happen.

Many times since then, I have wanted to do something to make her dream of helping others but, there was always something that needed to be done…and the fact is – I just did not follow through.

Kyleigh and I…we have our moments. We get into it at times…she aggravates me, I aggravate her. But, at the utmost, I love her and she loves me.

So, these posts, the pictures, the stories. I want people on my list to know and understand what Type 1 Diabetes is – that it is a disease that she will live with for the rest of her life. If she gets too high and too low, it is not good for her. By telling other people her story, it will humanize it to them and make people understand what it is. Despite all the information out there, people just do not know.

I am sure there are days she does not like to inject herself or have me inject her. There are probably days she does not want to prick her hand one more time. But, she has not said much of that lately. And a big part of that is I know she has accepted that it is part of her…but not all of her.

So yep, my honey, my little brat – she is quite the character. She sees things more differently than most people I find. One of her favourite sayings is, “Its okay to be different. It just seems that diabetes has brought out something different in her and she looks at things more differently than most people at such an early age”.

Right now, I am working on a website to be a bit more proactive in telling her story so I can create awareness for her.

So there…this is the beginning 🙂

Em Williams