Type1 Superstar ✨Marley✨

Leading up to the one-year anniversary of Marley's diagnosis (14th November 2022), I finally feel like I can take a breath and reflect on that fateful time. We were traumatised, probably still are. From the outside looking in, we appeared fine and in control, but we were paddling in unknown and very deep waters. I know I still can’t look at photos from that time without feeling the trauma and guilt of not realising sooner that our little girl was so unwell. We thought we knew Type 1. After all, my father-in-law was diagnosed at 13 years old. We'd treated hypos before, but boy, we had no idea.

Marley was 10 when diagnosed last November. She had lost a lot of weight that year, which we had attributed to a growth spurt. She was drinking lots of water, which was not out of character, as she had done this since a toddler. We had even had our youngest daughter tested earlier that year, but we didn’t see this coming for Marley, and we quickly realised we didn’t know Type 1. From the minute the doctors called and requested to see us, my heart started racing. She had always been a healthy child with barely a cough to her name. She was scared, and so were my husband and I. All you want to do in life is protect your children, and the feeling of helplessness and shock was overwhelming. We knew we needed to keep calm for Marley. The words, "No matter what happens, we have your back," were out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. But it seems that’s all she needed to hear. We were sent directly from the doctor's surgery to the emergency room, where they swept us up and started assisting Marley. Her BGL was 27, and her ketones were 7. She was in diabetic ketoacidosis. She had never even had blood taken before, let alone been on a drip, but she took a deep breath and rolled with the punches. It’s been that way ever since. She started doing her own injections four times a day before we even left the hospital. She was determined.

We went straight from her five-day stay in the hospital to dance concert rehearsals and back into basketball the following week. She hasn’t looked back since. She tried out for every sports team available this year in interschool sports, has led her green team as sports captain, and even taken a lead role in her school production. Not once has she complained, which means you’ll never hear me complain. She went on a CGM four days after leaving the hospital, which gave us some peace of mind. She then went on an insulin pump five months later, which has been a huge game changer. I remember feeling the fog lift from my brain that week, not realising I had been in a survival haze all year. The pump has given her so much flexibility.

Did we worry about what the future looked like for our little girl? You bet we did. We were afraid of many limitations. We forgot for a moment, that, we had raised a warrior. She's got this, and we’ve got her. We have sleepless nights and long alarm-filled days. We may take a few more things with us before leaving the house, and we talk in carb counts and bolus and basal rates. We change infusion sets every two days and Dexcoms every ten days. Date night with my husband can be pre-filling her insulin reservoirs for the next three weeks. Life has changed, but we have a healthy young girl thriving, and I wouldn't change this. Some days may slow her down, but she truly is unstoppable.