It was years ago.  Many, many years ago.  13 years ago, to be exact.  I was four.  

  And I remember being four and normal.  I’d been a happy kid.  I remember that much.  I found immense joy in playing with dolls in my back yard, near the big tree the neighbor kid had gotten stuck in one summer.  I loved to swim, and was convinced that I was a mermaid princess and my parents just hadn’t told me yet.  I had a dog that I loved and played with frequently.  His name was Marutte.  We also had two cats; mouse and bear.  I watched The Lion King, Wish Bone and Bill Nye the Science Guy religiously, and seemed to always be with one of my friends, a trait that I’ve still retained to this day.

I don’t remember the exact date; it was thirteen years ago.  But I remember that I was at a girl named Kindles fifth birthday party, and I’d eaten some cake.  I felt sick and went crying to my father, who picked me up and took me to the rest room.  I never did actually get sick.

A few weeks later my mother, who ran her own pre-school/day care centre at the time, took her whole class to a playground on Fort Richardson Air Force Base.  It was the last day before summer, I think, and the other mothers had made mom a quilt, thanking her.  

  When we got to the play ground, I ran half way across the field, and then stopped suddenly, feeling a pain in my stomach again, and turned around, half walking, half loping, back underneath of the big oak tree that my mother was watching me from under, and I sat down next to her.
     “What’s wrong, sweetie?”  She asked, as she put her arm around me and started to play with my hair, then even more yellow in colour than now.
     “My tummy hurts, and I’m tired.”  I replied and closed my eyes.  I slept for a while, and then I woke up, tears in my eyes, and complained of a stomach ache like I’d never complained in my life.  I had to be taken home right away and put to bed until my father came home.  Mom gave me some medicine to make me sleep even more, put The Lion King in dad’s VCR player, and left me to sleep with a large jug of water.

I woke up late that evening.  My dad was in the living room and he and mom were yelling.  Or, more accurately, mom was crying and dad was yelling.
  “I tell you, Louise, It’s diabetes!  She’s drinking like a camel, she’s ALWAYS in the bathroom, she gets sick WHENEVER she eats, she’s tired, and she’s gaining weight…”  I should probably tell you my father was a medical officer in the U.S. Navy when he was younger.  After Vietnam he was moved to the National Guard, and that’s when he met my mother, who was an X-ray Technician turned medical transcriptionist.  
  “Cancer!  It has to be cancer…Oh, God…” My mother managed between sobs.  Now, I had no idea what diabetes was.  But I knew what cancer was.  I was a hypochondriac even at the tender age of four.  And, I also knew what dieing was.  I had just lost me memere, my mother’s mother, to a heart attack as she and pepere had been driving to church.  I also knew I was horrified of death, and of illness.  Horrified something could be wrong with me.  I’d been through episodes where I’d convinced myself I’d had all sorts of diseases, ranging from rabies to AIDS.  No joke.  Looking back, it was probably a prelude to my depression.  Anyways,  I heard mommy crying, and as it would have been for most little girls, that was enough to worry me even further.  I walked into the living room, and my mom quickly wiped her eyes and put on her smile that I was so used to seeing.  Back then, mom always smiled.  Always.  She summoned me to her and pulled my small body into her lap, and we dropped the subject.  I forgot about it a day later.

About a weekend later, I was getting ready to go to a piano recital when I said I wasn’t feeling good again.  But we contributed it to stage fright.  It WAS my first piano recital.  Maybe about four hours before hand I was in the living room and my mother was brushing my hair through.  I felt her stop for a minute, and run her hand through it.  At that, I turned around.  My mother didn’t generally just stroke my hair unless she was doing some other activity and I was just on her lap, or lying next to her or something.  I turned to see her holding a fistful of my hair in her hand, staring at my father.  I didn’t know what the word she mouthed at the time was, but I think she was reaffirming her cancer suspicion.  I remember dad looking at her, then me, and then he grabbed his keys off the top of our piano.
  “I’m going to the store.  I’ll be right back.”  He said, very quietly.  Mother and I waited in the living room, passing the time by playing duets on the old ivory keys until he came home and offered her a bag.
  “What’s this?”
  “Keto dye sticks.  Go test her.”  And with that, I was ushered off to the bathroom to check for ketones.  

On the scale of none, trace, moderate, or high, mine were off the scale.

Mom started crying, and dad phoned my piano teacher to tell her we wouldn’t be going to my recital.  After that they changed me, very quickly, into pants and a shirt and carried me out to the car, mom had my shoes in her hand and put them on me in the car.  I started crying.  I had no idea what was going on, but on top of feeling rather ill, I was scared.  My father didn’t act or look worried for no reason.  I was taken to a small clinic in the city, I don’t remember the reason why we went there and not to the emergency room at our usual hospital at the Air Force Base.

The woman who took my blood test was older, and she had a red-brown hair colour.  I don’t remember anything else about her.  They took my blood, and I cried some more.  We waited about two hours there, and she came back and told my parents I was very, very sick.  I had to be admitted to the hospital immediately, or I would die.

We were unable to get an appointment that night, and the ER was full, so I stayed at home, tucked in bed between my parents.  Mom got up frequently and walked around, getting water, petting the cats…anything to distract her.  Dad read to me until I fell asleep.

The next morning I was woken up early and put in some fairly nice clothes to go to the doctors office.  When we got there, I was taken into an examination room immediately.  A man looked over my chart and got a wheel chair, and I was rushed off to the pediatric ward, where, shortly after settling in, two more nurses came back, and rushed me off to the ICU where I was given an IV drip.  

  I don’t remember too much about the hospital stay, except for hating it.  I coulnd’t eat real food for days.  I was living off of ice chips.  I finally had a full-blown fit and a nurse brought me some Nilla Wafers to nibble on.
  “Eat them slowly.”  She told me when she put them infront of me.
I cleared them in less than a minute.

I cried when my blood sugar was checked every two hours.  And twice a day my blood was actually drawn.  I learned to fear the doctors, and the needles.  

My parents were taught how to count carbohydrates, how to give me shots, and how to take my sugar.  Then my parents taught me.

I have a strong memory of, towards the middle of my visit, my dad sneaking the dog onto the hospital grounds to see me.  He dressed me in some real pajamas and took me outside, pulling the IV stand behind us, and led me out to the lawn, where mom was waiting with the dog.  I remember crying, but I don’t know if it was because I was so happy to see him, or weather I was sad that I couldn’t go home with him yet.

I remember my last day in the hospital.  The nurse had asked me the night before if I wanted to go home the next day or stay for another weekend.  And I was SO ready to go home.  Who wouldn’t be?  Life in that sterile, white prison was hell.  I missed my bed, and my pets, and my friends.  I missed my LIFE, or whatever life a four year old girl can have.  I realy missed my piano lessons too, and my swing set.  In any case, that night we packed, and in the morning we left when the discharge papers went through.

We got home, and I ran straight for the backyard, where my swing set was.  My parents let me stay there for myself for a while as they cleaned out all the cabinets of sweets, or other “no” foods.  They could see me from the back window.

That night, before dinner, I was asked if I was hungry.  Well, of course I was hungry.  I’d been eating ice-chips for a week.  
    “A lot!”  I answered enthusiastically.  My mom smiled.  She seemed so happy.  My father, on the other hand, looked away and opened the refrigerator to take out the insulin vile.  I was confused.

What?  We had been through this!  I had the disease, and the doctors had gotten rid of it, said my four year old mind.  After all, the hospital wouldn’t let me go if I was still sick…right?

I cried when my dad put the skinny needle into my thigh.  I don’t know if I cried because it hurt, or because I was angry that I was still doing this.  Or maybe I was just realy confused.  But it was then that I realized this was something that wasn’t going to leave me alone.  No matter what I did in the future, weather it was high-school, college, riding horse back, hanging out with friends, I was going to have to learn to live with this disease.  It was a part of me, and I couldn’t deny that.