One "Shot" In The Dark

Earlier this month, we quietly celebrated one really brave boy.  Isaac was diagnosed with Type I diabetes on August 9th of 2004 when he was three years old.  

  Isaac, the week he had his onset of Diabetes, but we didn't know it yet.  He looked much more frail and skinny (it got MUCH worse) than he does in this picture below, taken only 3 months after his hospitalization!

With a jog down memory lane, I thought I'd share something I wrote two months after he got diagnosed.  A few folks have read it, but only way back then!  I had titled it what I titled this blog post.  Just keep in mind as you are reading, that this was an email I wrote to friends and family almost 7 years ago!


It's morning:  Isaac says with a quivering voice, "...I'm moving, Mommy..."


"Isaac, after it's over, you can cry, but please don't move!  Let's be brave!"  My unskilled hands tremble as I try hard not to think about how scary I think needles are in the first place.  Meanwhile, no one is here to hold Isaac down, so I'm straddling him.  One leg under him; one on top. -His bare, skinny bottom exposed.  I think to myself, "Come on Shelly, just one quick stick... don't put it in so slow this time!...Okay...stick is in... good!"


All of a sudden, Isaac tenses up and kicks out his legs, followed by a big scream from him and frustration from me.  Because, of course, the needle fumbles out of his little bottom, and I didn't even get the insulin in!  Nervously, yet excitedly, Isaac says, "I'm brave, Mommy!!"


"Yes, Isaac, you are so brave, but honey, I didn't get the insulin in, so I have to do it again."  Screams of disbelief follow!  I hear screams from the other room too, and realize that Abigail must have run out of Cheerios!


"I'm terrible at this!" I think to myself.  "If I had wanted to be a nurse, I would be one!"  This time I take one more "stab" at it while quivering with my own voice, "Please don't move!"  In goes the medicine this time, praise the Lord!


"YAY!  Now we can eat, Isaac!"
"Uh-huh! Now we can EAT!!"


Though I just gave an example of how it really goes these days it hasn't always been that way.  Isaac is tensing up about the shots a lot now.  He dreads them and it seems there is just this overwhelming frustration about having to do it every day.  I think the permanency of these daily routines is sinking in with him, and that might just be why he gets so frustrated.  I, however, get lost in diabetes these days.  Endless test strips and syringes, carb-counting and battles of all kinds.  Just the now normal hustle and bustle of the day!  I don't know that I have ever wrapped my brain around Isaac having to deal with this for the rest of his life.  Even though I must know it somewhere in my brain, I don't think it has sunk in completely.


Most of the time, I think we all handle this really well.  I think it is a blessing that we get reminders from God quite frequently.  Otherwise, we might loose ourselves in this disease, and never find our way out of the struggles!


Last night, Abigail woke up at midnight, and I really don't know why.  She has been sleeping 10-12 hours every night for the last 2 weeks.  But once I got up with her I couldn't go to sleep.  We don't check Isaac's glucose levels every night anymore, but many times I just wake up automatically.  I lunge out of bed with my heart racing and the worry of "What if it's too low?!" (Which is the problem we are having, not sugars that are too high.)  Sometimes I go in there and it's just right.  Other times, I had very valid reasons to be up and checking, and think to myself, "I really should do this every night!!"  Ever since he started treatment, he sleeps SOOOO hard, when before he was very easy to disturb or wake up.  It is very hard to wake him up now and get him to drink anything, much less eat!  But many times I have to do just that!  It is SO cute though, when I sit him up in bed, and he slumps over, fast asleep!


After I put Abigail back in her bed last night, I went in to check on Isaac.  As I was getting the lancet all ready and the sounds of the very familiar clicking and beeping were echoing in the room, Isaac lifted his arm and pointed his sweet, little finger at me.  Bless his precious heart!  -Completely asleep, deep breathing included, but he had that finger ready!  For some reason, permanency started to hit me because of what he did.  Though as I am typing this, I am hysterically laughing at how cute he was, only hours ago I was weeping.  I'm so glad we have Isaac.  I'm so glad that there are wonderful means in this world to give him the blessing of life itself and the quality of life that we want him to have.  Isaac is going to be fine...  I had an "awakening" last night...  


--And I guess that's okay...

Love from our family, to you and yours!

Cameras, cameras...Get ready for a roller-coaster!

My 5th child has hardly been photographed except for when he first arrived!  No, no, no... it's not what you are thinking!  It's not because I'm too busy, or don't care about his milestones, or don't want to share them.  ***SIGH***  I have had camera issues.  Too many to count.  How can you blog about your family without photos!!!  Lack of photos has had me uninspired to write!  Let's see, first my beloved Canon "broke"... so I thought.  I had tried changing the batteries, but it would not turn on.  I began looking for my 2 year service agreement.  Who knows where I put it when we were moving a year ago!  Started using the OLD olympus, and then somehow lost it!!!!  I didn't worry about that though because I didn't even really enjoy the photos it would take.  I would have to just purchase a new camera!  So I began that process of reading review, after review.  Couldn't really afford to buy what I wanted, so I resigned to saving.  No instant gratification for things like that because we never, NEVER use credit cards for anything!!


Luke began smiling; Whitley did a major renovation in our basement; our daughter was baptized! I had no camera, so I was at the mercy of anyone who would let me borrow.  Our music minister let me borrow his camera the evening Abigail was baptized.  While I was helping her get dressed afterwards, I was sitting on a bench in the dressing room.  I stood up, and THUD!!! You got it, the camera had been on my lap and crashed to the floor.  Sweating, I picked it up and turned it on and it gave me some message that didn't sound promising!  I began to FREAK!! Oh NO!!! Now I have to buy TWO cameras!!!!  AAAAAAAHHHH!  Later I found out that the battery or memory card had jiggled just enough to render it momentarily useless.  After taking those out and putting them back in, it began to work again.  PHEW!  (At least so far, I haven't been told otherwise.)  Then the glorious day came when my husband got my camera to working!!! YAY!  That's all I wanted!  My best, most favorite Canon to WORK!  I used it for a while and then it mysteriously disappeared.  We have searched high and low.  My mom (expert finder) even looked.  She found the Olympus under the couch cushion, but NO CANON.  UGH!  Back to using the Olympus.  Actually I don't even think I took one picture with it this time.  Over some time, my mom came up with this thought:  She had had a garage sale in Ft. Stockton, and had taken some stuff from my house.  She wonders if David deposited the Canon into a brown paper bag that had stuff for sale in it.  It wouldn't surprise me, because David is our little property shuffler!  She says she remembers selling a camera, but really thought it was a camera the same color of mine that was hers.  All we are left to think is that my favorite camera accidentally got sold for a couple of bucks!

Fast forward several weeks, and more looking, my sister-in-law, Amber, and I took our kids to the splash pad at the park.  Cameraless, I of course took pictures of her and her son and my children.  Then she took over and took some more great shots.  I remember seeing that she had set the camera down on the ground, but didn't think anything of it.  The next day, after realizing she must have left it, she went in a panic to see if it was there to no avail.  It was an expensive Sony that she and my brother bought while they were on their honeymoon.  They were so upset!  Just a few days later Justin bought a new camera with lots of extra add-ons from other companies through Amazon.  It had not even arrived, and Amber was at the public swimming pool (right next to the splash pad). Someone recognized her as the owner of the camera that had been turned in!!!  WOW!  Now, what to do with the one they just bought?  It would be too much of a pain to return the camera and the extras they bought to other companies.  Justin called me and asked if I wanted to have the one they just found!  I was taken back and shocked that she had even found it that I didn't really respond very well at first.  I sort of had to process this information.  Justin said on the phone, "The Lord is forcing me to bless you!"  I got to laughing at that later, and realized that maybe that was indeed true.  So, *****DRUMROLL***** I am now the proud owner of an awesome camera that I could not have purchased without saving for a long time...at least until... I find the Canon (??) that may not be findable.  So to celebrate my new camera that has a home on top of Luke's Armoire, unreachable by David, here is the first three pictures I have taken, and they are of Luke, of course!!!  Poor, hardly photographed baby!!!!

So cute he makes me wanna cry!!!

He doesn't seem too upset that I haven't taken many photos, now does he?

Proudly showing off the dimple his Nana (Whit's mom) passed down to him.

Luke's favorite fingers!!!

Love from our family, to you and yours!