Update on Luke

I wanted to give all of you an update on our last dr. appointment we had for Luke. As most of you know, Luke was diagnosed soon after Emily for being in the early stages of diabetes. One of the first tests that they did on Luke showed he had some of the antibodies that attack your pancreas which in turn eventually make you become a diabetic. But fortunately the antibodies have not yet attacked it enough that he would need the care and attention that Emily requires. Thank God!

Anyway, we went last week to meet with our new pediatric endocrinologist. Our last dr has moved and we were really not too sad to see him leave. He was not the most positive or hopeful doctor. When you are dealing with something like diabetes, you need hope and receive care from a dr. that offers you hope in a situation that sometimes is anything but hopeful. Our new doctor that we met with on Wed. was really positive and really seemed to care what would be best for our children. We were meeting to see if we wanted to repeat the IV glucose tolerance test that we did on Luke back in May. It was the worst thing that we have yet had to do with him. They put an IV in each arm and shoot large amounts of glucose in one IV while drawing blood out of the other IV continuously for about 45 minutes. Well, Luke HATED it and did not respond well to it. It is important for us to do the test because it gives us information on how well his pancreas handles such large amounts of glucose. The last time they did the test, the results were not good, not good at all and it showed that he would probably be needing the same care that we are doing now with Emily sooner than later. Well, of course that is not what we wanted to hear.

Well, it is time to do the test again to see now more than six months later, how his pancreas responds to the glucose again. We talked to the dr about our concerns and just did not want to make Luke go through all of that again. We wanted to see if they could do anything for Luke that would make this not such a traumatic situation for him. The dr said that we could wait until this summer to do the test again to see if Luke would do better because he would be a little older. I told him we could wait thirty more years and Luke would never calmly want to go through that test again. So, the dr. said that they would put him in ICU in Temple, put him to sleep and repeat the test under the superivision of the staff at the ICU. I know that it may seem a little extreme, but this is the best thing for Luke. Hopefully, we will get to be in the room with him and he will not have to endure what he had to last time.

I wanted to share something very positive that the dr shared with us. He said that Luke could stay in this phase he is currently in right now from anywhere from 6 months to 20 years. We are already past the 6 month part! :) So, please pray that he will have many, many years free of diabetes. Unfortunately, he has two out of the four antibodies that make you have diabetes, AND has a sibling with diabetes. So, that is why he thought it is a good idea to repeat the test so we can see how he is doing. The dr. said that his numbers could have gotten better , stayed the same or have gotten worse.

We are planning on doing the test in a couple of weeks. We will let you all know when we schedule the test and what the results are once we receive them.

So, please be prayer that Luke's body can tolerate the glucose and that his numbers are better than the last time or at least have stayed the same. I know that God can do anything! I know that he can heal Luke and allow him to never have a life filled with the stress and problems that comes with diabetes.