Our first full day at the hospital began early, probably around 7, when the nurses and doctors started coming in. Dr. Lindsay was one of the first to come in. I was still laying in the bed next to Lyla (Greg was on the pull-out chair/bed). I don’t remember much of what he and I talked about, but I did ask him if Lyla’s ridiculous amounts of energy had anything to do with her high blood sugar. He laughed and said, “No, if anything she has been more fatigued lately.” I don’t think that is what I wanted to hear!

Once I was up, it took a few minutes to get a menu from the food service people and get Lyla’s breakfast ordered. They had a toddler menu and a carb counting menu, but not a toddler carb counting menu. I guess it just shows how unique she really is. There are not very many toddlers with type one diabetes. She was overly hungry by the time the food came. Her blood sugar was around 80, which is a little bit low. She ate some yogurt, fruit loops, banana, and a bite or two of scrambled eggs. After her meal, the nurses gave her an insulin shot. She did not appreciate it.

We met with the nurse educator after breakfast. As an educator, I was impressed by the structured lessons and teaching. We learned more about diabetes and insulin. Lyla looked at some books and pushed the buttons on the bed while we met. Then a volunteer from the gift shop came up with a balloon and book from Grammy Jackson. Lyla loved the balloon and entertained herself chasing after it for the better part of the morning.

Next we met with the diabetes social worker. I’m not really sure what the point of that visit was. She asked us some questions and talked to Greg about her travels around the world. After she left, we checked Lyla’s blood sugar before she had some lunch. It came back at 450, which is really high. She started eating her spaghettios and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She ate and ate. Having had a couple of doses of insulin already, she was starting to get her appetite back. I think she is eating to gain back the weight that she has lost over the last couple of months. Greg ran to get us some lunch while Lyla was eating. I met with the pharmacist to go over all of Lyla’s supplies and medication. Truthfully, it was a bit overwhelming. We have ketone strips that we have to use to test her urine if her blood sugar is too high, a glucagon kit for when her blood sugar goes so low that she passes out, two types of insulin, needles, glucose test strips . . . I’m sure I am forgetting something.

Greg got back from Carl’s Jr about the time Lyla was done eating. Of course, though, Lyla decided she wanted some of our food. This is going to be one of our challenges with Lyla’s diabetes. She asks for bites any time we are eating something. Truthfully, we usually give them to her. She’s gotten to the point where she expects it. Finally, after she had eaten her lunch, and some of ours, it was time to give her another insulin shot. The nurses had been training us in the morning on how to give the shots. We had to give her insulin to compensate for the high blood sugar and to counter the lunch. I know that I got the needle ready. I can’t remember which of us gave her that first shot. I think it was Greg.

After lunch, the hospital dietitian came by to teach us about carb counting. Since I teach nutrition at UVU, a lot of the information was a little too basic. However, this carb counting is totally different from what I am used to. I know calorie counting from when I teach weight management. Carbs are a different beast. It seems a little counter-intuitive for me to not be counting things like butter and fat. The dietitian actually knew several people in the health promotion and education department at the U. We talked about some of the people we knew there. Once the dietitian left, the hospital representative came in to tell us about parent resources at the hospital. We actually didn’t use any of those — except the free continental breakfast, of course.

Lyla should have been taking a nap, but there was no way that girl was going to go to sleep with all the excitement. She really struggles to sleep outside of her crib. I can think of only two times in her life that she has fallen asleep somewhere else in the house. We decided that the nap just wasn’t going to happen, so Greg took her for a walk outside. She was all too happy to be out of her room. She wouldn’t hold Greg’s hand at all, and once they got outside all she wanted to do was run. It was windy out there. Greg had to keep picking her up and putting her back in the grassy areas to keep her from the cars in the busy parking lot, which is of course where she wanted to run. Just being outside made her incredibly happy though. It was actually a really nice day and I lamented that we couldn’t be at home enjoying it at the park. Greg and Lyla were still outside when Tami’s family came to visit. Lyla was so excited to see them, she ran across the parking lot to get to them the instant she saw them, with Greg on her tail, looking for cars and ready to catch the bounding one-year-old should she have fallen. They brought Lyla some stickers, coloring books, crayons and fingerpaints. Plus, they brought her some toys and books from their house. The things from Tami kept Lyla entertained for the remainder of her visit in the hospital.

As soon as Tami’s family left, Lyla crawled up on to Greg and fell asleep. She was totally exhausted after a night of poor sleep, followed by no nap. She had only slept for about five minutes when her dinner came and it was time to check her blood again. This time it was at 50, which is way too low. We tried to get her to eat her dinner, but she completely melted on us. Twice before the diagnosis, we had days where she had done this at lunch. She gets too hungry and then she just starts crying. We try to get her to eat and she refuses. She even spits food out if we try to shove it in her mouth. Usually after much effort, we are able to get something in. Once she starts eating, she shovels food as fast as she possibly can. As she did this in the hospital, we realized that this behavior is a result of low blood sugar. We had thought she was just too hungry, when in fact there was a bigger problem all along. That night at the hospital, we finally got her to eat some fruit snacks, then she was interested in eating dinner. Of course, it helped the we found a Barney video to watch while we ate.

Greg and I decided to take shifts eating in the cafeteria so our little bird would not want bites of our food. Since we are counting every morsel, it is really challenging to let her have bites. Greg went down to the cafeteria and I stayed with Lyla. She ate and watched Barney while I caught up on some work emails.

We gave Lyla her next round of shots just as Greg was returning. A few minutes later, our friend/brother, Dickson came by to visit. Lyla was trying out her new fingerpaints while Dickson was there. She loved them, but was using huge globs of paint. I finally had enough and rinsed her off and let her play with the other toys. I ran down to the cafeteria to get some food at that point. Even though the hospital is decorated so colorfully, it is really quite a depressing place to be. There were a lot of adults in the cafeteria. I don’t think any of them looked well-rested or happy. There is so much sadness in that hospital. I heard the people behind me in line talking about a delayed surgery because of a seizure. It made me really grateful that Lyla “just” has diabetes.

I returned to the room as Greg and Lyla were skyping with Greg and Diana. Then our friend David stopped by with some snacks for us. The nurses also came in to do a bedtime check of Lyla. We got her in her pajamas and ready for bed. I was hoping that because she had slept so little in the hospital, that she would go to sleep quickly and be out all night. I was so wrong. She played around for several hours. At one point, I think it was around 11, I took her for a walk around the hospital. She gained quite a bit of attention from the nurses and staff. Here was this tiny little girl in her pajamas, happily skipping through the halls of the hospital at 11 p.m. She walked down and back up all three flights of stairs. Finally, I decided that I had enough and she was going to sleep. I ended up rocking her for a long time and she finally crashed around midnight. Greg and I stayed up talking for a few minutes about how surreal the whole experience had been. We finally went to sleep at around 12:30. The nurses came in again at 2 to check Lyla’s blood. She cried for a minute and I rocked her back to sleep again. She stayed soundly asleep until probably 8 or 8:30 the next morning. I, unfortunately, did not. The doctors and nurses started coming in at around 7, so I decided it was time to get up then.