When we moved to Philadelphia from our 2 year stint in the UK, I was really impressed by the number of universities and large medical facilities in the area. I was glad to know that we had a major children's hospital in the city. Of course, I never wanted to have to need it.  Well, need it we did.

 

Jean-Paul was checked in to the emergency room at CHOP and they began running tests.  He got an IV line so that they could give him some fluids as he was a little dehydrated.  They were pretty quick to confirm the diagnosis and give him his first dose of insulin.  Diabetes is one of those things that is pretty straight forward ot diagnose.  Not a lot of guessing involved.  more on this later... 

 

The rest of the emergency room stay was focused on determining if the ketones in his blood had reached a dangrous level...something called ketoacidosis. An involved explanation can be found here : http://www.isletsofhope.com/diabetes/complications/diabetic_ketoacidosis_dka_1.html.  In short, when the body can't produce enough insulin to utilize sugars/carbohydrates from foods, it begins to digest body fat and muscles.  The output of this is ketones.  When they build up they can cause a life threatening condition called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). (makes you think twice about ever going on the atkins diet??) If this had happened Jean-Paul would have needed an Insulin drip.  Fortunately, it wasn't the case.

 

As far as the Jean-Paul was concerned, he was doing fine.  No hysterics, lots of questions.  He heard they had TVs with Playstations and was mostly focused on getting the nurses to find one for him while he was waiting for a room upstairs (also with TVs and playstations...he was told). Since Marc and I have always been pretty restrictive about TV watching and Jean_Paul doens't have any video games at home, he could put up with a few needles and some orange jello that wasn't too tasty for a few days of unlimited TV and games.

 

We had a great LPN who answered our questions.  She had 2 daughters with type 1 diabetes and made us feel like everything would be ok... different but OK.