The Endocrinologist

Saturday was a busy day.  I also met one of the pediatric endocrinologists following his case.  I wrote about the experience, but keep in mind I'd only just learned about his diagnosis and didn't know much in the way of details yet...

It is not good when your case interests the edocrinologist...
I saw the endocrinologist today. She started discussing the case with the nurse practitioner. I asked a question, and she gave me a long look.

"And you are?..."

"Fay." I replied not quite getting what she was asking.

"His mother?!"

"Yes!"

"Oh! You looked too good to have just had a baby."

It is silly, but that made me feel a little bit better.

She was quite friendly and more than happy to discuss the case with me and help me understand a bit more on what was going on. Unfortunately some of it went over my head, but I'm trying to pick up what I can. She has cared for infants in the past with neonatal diabetes. From what I gathered, there are numerous reasons a newborn could have transient or permanent diabetes. It could be a goof up on chromosome 6, or it could be a problem somewhere along the line with the sulfonylurea channel in which the insulin is made, but can't be excreted by the cell. She's planning to start him on sulfonylureas to see if that improves the situation. There is a genetic lab in England that follows cases like these, but they want more information on Bean before they get involved.

On a good note, the endocrinologist seemed optimistic that Bean has transient diabetes rather than permanent. She was also pleased that he came out a good size for a baby with diabetes.

Apparently Bean's sugar numbers while very, very high are not in the upper bracket of blood sugars. She's seen kids with sugars as high as 1500, numbers that would basically take out an adult. "These kids (diabetic newborns) are very, very resilient." She is most concerned with his numbers getting too low and causing seizures and shock, so they are carefully monitoring his sugar levels and insulin. Another primary concern is keeping him well hydrated, because just as in type I or II diabetes, these kids pee constantly. This is why keeping track of wet and messy diapers (he made a lot of those too), wasn't a good indicator of Bean's health before we brought him in to the (regional children's hospital). He couldn't make use of the milk he was eating, it was just going right through him. Basically his organs were starving.

As far as long term consequences, the endocrinologist called that a "loaded question." There are a number of possibilities depending on what exactly is going wrong. For one, if the diabetes does go into remission, he's more likely to develop diabetes later in life...

From what I gathered, there are still lots of questions, but the focus right now is to control Bean's sugar and have him gain some weight. The hope is that it is transient diabetes and it will go away over time.

Currently the endocrinologist is optimistic about Isaac. She says she doesn't sugar coat news or give false hope in order to make the parents feel better, because that isn't fair to the parents.

This is all brand new to me, so I may have misheard or misunderstood some things. As I learn more I will write more. For those that are interested, here is one of the articles the endocrinologist referenced, published in The Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1847805
It goes into a lot more detail than I have. My brain is tired right now and I haven't been able to digest it all yet. I plan to delve into some more articles, read up some so I can ask more intelligent questions.