A couple of hard days

Last week Mike had a Dr appt where they discussed blood work that he had done about a month ago. The tests showed that his blood sugar was high at the time of the test and also that it had been running high for at least the last 3 months. After his pancreatitis, he had "temporarily" been diabetic (the pancreas is what produces insulin), he came home from the hospital in October needing to count carbs and on oral medication and insulin shots. He was weaned from the medications in December. Since December, Mike has done great at cutting out most sugar, but not so well with counting carbs or checking his blood sugar...we were trying to get back to normal afterall. Well at this point it looks like the diabetes may not be so temporary and last Thursday Mike was put back on the oral diabetes medication. He's been a little more tired than usual which seemed fairly easily explained by a stressful job, busy family, not so successful rental properties, and a trip to CT for a funeral. Since the weekend though the tiredness got significantly worse and he also felt very weak (this instantly made me weak!). He came home early from work on Tuesday and yesterday morning he had another Dr appt. He was sent for a CATscan and blood work. Yesterday I was a wreck! Immediately my body went back into panic mode and I felt similar to how I felt the whole month of October. It was torture. Unfortunately I tend to think the worst in medical situations because everyone who knows us knows we've come very close to the worst too many times in our family (and on the same token we almost never have plain old illnesses like other people get). The anxiety was heightened last night when we happened to run into Mike's primary care Dr at the grocery store last night, where she told us point blank..."your pancreas looks ugly". She did not have the other 10 or so CATscans Mike had between Oct-Dec for comparison however. Well, today, after a little runaround and many phone calls we finally found out his bloodwork was normal except for his high sugar (which we know and can handle)...most importantly his pancreatic enzymes are normal...this is GREAT news!!! A little while later we also heard form the gastroenterologist who had the old scans, that his pancreas is SIGNIFICANTLY better than December!! Now I can attempt to feel normal again. It is hard to explain how panicked I got, but I immediately went into the mode of "he's getting pancreatitis again"--which almost killed him. I sincerely don't want to be a panicker, but crazy scarey illnesses seem to be our cross to bear. Mike's current situation is far from a crazy scarey illness, it is only tiredness because of elevated bloodsugar and a need to figure out how best to control it, but like I said we've had too many life threatening situations in our family. In the first two and a half years of his life I rushed Jonathan to the ER close to death3 times...as a three day old infant his blood sugar was undetectable and he had a stroke, at 2 years old it was 19, and at 2 1/2 on the day Madi was supposed to be baptized he had a grand mal seizure and his blood sugar was 21. It turns out he was born with Glycogen Storage Disease type 9...his body couldn't store glycogen(sugar)...he outgrew it. Madi had almost never been sick in her life, and just before she turned 5 a random virus caused her body to start attacking her blood platelets and she had to spend 2 days in pediatric ICU with Idiopathic Immune Thrombocytopedic Purpura. She is no more likely to ever get this than anyone else...it is a fluke thing. Mike also had periocarditis about 7 years ago (inflamation of the lining around the heart). I say all this to explain why I tend jump to worst case senarios...because we've been there, done that. We do seem to bounce back though, so while I was freaked out yesterday, by tomorrow I should most likely be my normal self again. This might be very confusing to read because I'm currently in the period between totally stressed and normal. Sorry for the confusion! I do just want to thank all my wonderful friends who immediately stepped up to help us once again in our time of need. (You all know who you are and I love you!!) (You too Meme and Grampa Carlie who drove the 1 1/2 each way to sit in the waiting room with us.)