Once Upon a Time, there was an exhausted family. It was ours.

If you read the story of our move, you know that we were pretty well spent after the process of moving. And that was on the heels of 2020, which doesn’t really need a lot of explanation, but I might add that we also had a newborn baby that year as well as two kids doing full-time school from home. After finally moving into our beautiful new home and neighborhood, there was one big thing we saw between us and being able to settle down and decompress a little. That thing was a very exciting trip to Boston followed by a family reunion in New Hampshire. We were so excited to go and visit Boston and see family; but we knew that the reality of travel with 5 young children is tiring.

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While in Boston, we noticed some slightly odd behavior from Bianca who was 14 months old. She was insanely thirsty, not sleeping well, and having huge wet diapers. This made traveling with her even more difficult than it otherwise would have been, especially since Josh and I also didn’t sleep well. (And we get to be pretty decent drama-queens when we are sleep deprived.) After several of those hugely soaked through diapers, I wondered if there was something up.

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I looked up Bianca’s symptoms online and Type 1 Diabetes came up as a likely culprit. So, naturally, I called Daddy to ask him if I should be freaking out about this, or if it was just the internet which loves catastrophise even the most basic of symptoms. He told me that those were, indeed, symptoms of T1D and that since he was coming out the next day for the family reunion, he would bring a urine glucose test strip with him so that we could just know for certain. I asked what we should do if the answer was yes. He said, take her to the ER. I asked what we should do if the answer was no. He said, “Let her drink. It’s hot outside.”

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Daddy had me send him a text so that he would be sure to remember to bring the test strips; but somehow he still forgot them the next day when he came. So we just went to New Hampshire to enjoy time with family. Bianca was still not herself; but we knew that she was off her schedule, surrounded by unfamiliar people, and very tired, so we thought she was probably okay.

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As we had planned our trip back east, our original plan was for me to drive across the country with the kids and others who were going to the reunion, while Josh flew in order to miss less work. Josh felt quite bad about that decision. And despite my telling him that things would be fine, he felt like it would just be better for us to fly even though it would cost more. So we decided to just make it our family vacation as well as a reunion, hence the time in Boston beforehand. Looking back, I feel like he must have been inspired.

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Less than 48 hours after we arrived back home–and long before we would have returned had we driven home, Bianca was NOT doing well. She was insatiably thirsty, still very irritable, and her breathing had started to become labored and she was getting increasingly lethargic. We decided that it was time for answers. We took her to instacare and found out that she had a blood glucose reading of over 800. Her condition was so severe that they wouldn’t let us drive her to Primary Children’s Hospital. They called the Life-Flight team. I was super excited to ride in a helicopter; but they sent them via “ground transport” so it was just an ambulance.

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We were admitted for about 2 days. The first several hours were getting Bianca slowly back to healthy blood glucose, pH, and a bunch of other levels I don’t eve understand. The rest of the time was teaching Josh and I how to be the parents of a diabetic child. We had visits from doctors, nurses, dieticians, and social workers who helped us understand what was going on in our sweet baby’s body as well as how to measure blood glucose, count calories, and give insulin shots. By the time we left, we felt like we understood pretty well, and like we could handle this.

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And I think we genuinely did okay. But every other stressful part of our lives was still there. We still had a new house we were moving into. We still had five kids all home for summer break. We were still potty-training. Josh still had work. We still had tons of laundry. We still had all the things. Plus, the sky was constantly covered with a blanket of smoke. And the stress was just SO MUCH. I wasn’t really surprised when my anxiety kicked in again. But it definitely didn’t help things.

I feel the need to pause here and share that the number of tender mercies from God are too many to count through this experience. From the fact that Daddy forgot the glucose test strips, which allowed us to enjoy a family reunion and be at home, so close to an amazing children’s hospital with one of the largest teams of pediatric endocrinologists in the country, and surrounded by loving supportive family–instead of across the country where we know almost nobody, to the fact that our new Bishop has a son with juvenile diabetes, to the fact that though this is an enormous burden in so many ways, financially is not really one of them. We have felt so much love and support from the Savior and His hands here on the earth! And they just don’t stop! And despite the anxiety and the stress which I thought might crush me, the Savior truly delivered me! But that is another story all on its own.

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My hope for relief was always the beginning of school. If I could focus more on Bianca, and not be feeling like I was constantly neglecting my other 4 kids, things would surely be better. And they were. We started to get the hang of things, and I started a class that was every Tuesday night for 12 weeks. It was a sacred time for me to just walk away from it all and do something just for me. Things were seriously SO much better. I felt like a normal person again!

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Then, the Friday night before Thanksgiving, Portia (age 5) was not sleeping well. She woke up 4 times in the night to go to the bathroom and guzzle water. And despite all those trips to the bathroom, she still wet the bed. (She doesn’t do that.) As Josh and I discussed how strange that was the next morning, I realized what it reminded me of. I went up to Portia’s bed and immediately took her blood glucose with Bianca’s meter. Her glucose was 259. I wondered if perhaps the meter could be wrong, so I took mine as well. Mine was 84. I knew what we had to do.

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After a few phone calls, we were headed to Primary Children’s Hospital once again. And again, tender mercies began to ensue. The on-call endocrinologist for the weekend was Bianca’s doctor, so she already knew us. She met us in the ER along with another endocrinologist and after observing Portia’s condition–she was doing very well because of how early we caught it–and discussing how we had just been there 4 months before, they decided that we could skip being admitted and just go home. It was such a blessing! That weekend there were many visitors and well-wishers for Portia and her parents, and we were so grateful for their help and support! But I just felt broken.

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I knew that things would be fine. I knew that our life wasn’t actually going to change that much. But I just felt like I’d been hit with a train of hurt and more stress. It took me months to recover from that after Bianca. What was I going to do?!

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I needed somebody to mourn with me, I guess, because I reached out to our Bishop’s wife, Sister Porter. She was so kind and loving in her texts. And then she offered to bring us dinner. When they came, they brought us a delicious dinner (for which it was easy to count carbs!) and while they definitely did mourn with us, they also told us time and again “You guys have got this!” They knew that we were exhausted and weighed down; but they also assured us that we were strong and that things would be okay and that they would get better. I needed that SO MUCH! I felt so much lighter as they left.

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While they were there, I had missed a call from my sister Kathryn. I called her back and she informed me that she was trying to think of some way to help me, and she had recently heard of somebody ordering a cleaning service for someone who was in a really hard situation. She thought that would be a great way to lift some burden from me. I was so humbled and astonished that somebody would be so generous to me. She told me that she told my siblings what she was going to do and invited them to join if they wanted. I will always remember her words when she said “Elisabeth, everybody wants to help you.”

My broken heart was whole again in that moment. The diabetes was all still there. I still knew that my beautiful girls would have to go through this for their entire lives, and that Josh and I would still have to help and support with it for many many years to come. But the love I felt from my neighbors, from my family, and from the Savior healed my hurt and helped me feel like myself again. It truly was a beautiful miracle!

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So many other wonderful miracles have been ours as well. We were still able to go on our planned trip to Disneyland with the Monson family. We got a Dexcom for Portia after only 2 days of being diagnosed! (For those of you who don’t understand the significance of that, just know that before having a Dexcom, we had to get up every night at 2 AM to check blood sugar–that was for Bianca and Portia). And Portia is doing SO well with all these terrible changes in her life, and I know that one reason she is doing so well is because she has seen Bianca dealing with it for months.

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We truly do feel so blessed through this whole arduous process; but we are also still exhausted. I promised myself, when Bianca was diagnosed, that I would accept help from people who offer it. But, for the most part, I have no idea how to let people help us. But I am SUPER grateful for Janina–the cleaning lady–who came this week! She really took our main floor from catastrophe to glorious! It was such a blessing and glorious stress relief!

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I want to end this post by bearing my testimony. It is for me more than anything else. I believe in a wise, loving Father in Heaven who works in our lives for our greatest benefit. I believe that the more I make room for Him, the more goodness, joy, and peace I have in my life. I know that trials are universal to all in mortality; and I am SO grateful that I have never had to face them alone. I’m grateful for family and friends who support and love me. And I am also grateful that I have a knowledge of the Savior, Jesus Christ. He truly has saved me on countless occasions when nothing else could. I know that enduring hard times will make me stronger, and when I yoke myself to Jesus Christ, I receive His strength during the trial and afterwords. And if I make that the way of my life in this life and forever, He can ultimately make me like He is. And I can’t deny that He provides compensatory blessings along the way.

Elisabeth

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P.S. Everybody’s favorite question to ask after hearing about Portia’s diagnosis is: Are you going to get everybody else tested? The answer to this is yes. We are participating in the “TrialNet” test. It looks for certain antibodies in your blood that let you know if you have the gene for T1D (or something like that). The lovely irony of that, is that we signed up for the study at the beginning of November and got a test kit for Portia. We won’t be needing it. 🙂