Jacob

From his mom, Kristen:

Our son Jacob is almost 15 years old and has been living with T1D for 10 years. He was only four years old when we brought him to a doctor to be tested after we noticed that he was getting quite scrawny, he was constantly chugging water, and he had fruity-smelling breath. Little did we know that our lives would change forever the day he was diagnosed. We had no idea the difficult, stressful, exhausting, terrifying, expensive and painful journey that was ahead of us. Our little preschooler suddenly had to get used to having insulin shots 4 times a day and finger pokes for blood sugar checks 8 to 10 times a day. We as parents suddenly had to know how to give shots and become caregivers. We had to be dietitians, always reading food labels and measuring servings. We needed to do the math calculating how much insulin to give him based on the amount of carbs he ate. There was absolutely no room for errors. His life literally depended on us getting it right. And poor Jacob was so afraid and stressed out of the endless needles. He didn’t understand why Mom and Dad had to hurt him with needles all the time.

We have come a long way since diagnosis. Jacob does all of his own blood sugar finger pokes now. He is on an insulin pump, so instead of insulin injections 4 times a day, the pump is always on him and delivers the insulin. He only needs to change the pump site every 3 days. It’s a bit painful, but he does an awesome job, AND he can do it all himself. He also has a Dexcom. It automatically checks his blood sugar every 5 minutes, and send readings to our phones. It will alert us if his blood sugar is getting too low or high, and we also don’t need to do as many blood sugar checks which is awesome.

It’s starting to be pretty routine but still exhausting: always counting carbs and measuring his food, checking his supply inventory, scheduling doctor appointments, endless phone calls to pharmacies, the health insurance company, and nurses, studying his health reports, waking him up at 2:00 AM to eat some gummy bears because his Dexcom alerted us that his blood sugar is low, and having a plan in place for when he gets sick because it can potentially be pretty dangerous when he’s ill, especially if he gets the stomach flu.

It’s still heartbreaking too. As a parent his T1D is on my mind every single second of every single day. I wish that I could trade places with him and have T1D so he wouldn’t have to go through all of this.

We are so thankful for today’s technology to help us through this ordeal! The insulin pump has been wonderful, and now the Dexcom has been going great.

Jacob is 14 years old and is enjoying the 9th grade. He enjoys basketball, golf, legos and gaming on his PS5. He rocks the drums in band and also enjoys Knowledge Bowl. He is a smarty-pants straight-A honor student, and we are very proud of him.