Lauren Young

Maisie’s story

Diabetes UK is the charity leading the fight against the UK's devastating and fastest-growing health crisis, working to create a world where diabetes can do no harm.together. 

Now it’s becoming clearer in my head I’ll share Maisie’s story! 

It all started on Saturday 6th March 2021 and it was nothing but just a usual day In our household, Maisie had gone to bed at the usual time of 7pm, me and my significant other then watched a few programmes before we went to be ourselves! 

Around 1am on Sunday morning Maisie had woken us up and vomited everywhere, we thought maybe it’s something that she had eaten that hadn’t agreed with her or maybe she picked up a tummy bug. We bathed her,changed her bed sheets, then sung lullabies to get her back to sleep. 

During the Sunday she was very quiet, looked pale, and hadn’t eaten anything during the day! (I’d never had any problems with her eating before).

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday was the same, she still hadn’t eaten and she were as pale as a ghost! 

Fast forward to the Thursday morning, I then decided enough was enough and called the doctors at 8:30am. I had explained to the receptionist about Maisie’s symptoms and she had told me that because of Maisie’s age the Dr would give me a call back ‘this morning’! 

12pm I still had received no phone call, I thought maybe they were running slightly late witch would have been completely understandable considering their job role. 

1pm come!....... Still no phone call

2pm!........ Still no phone call 

3pm...4pm and still no phone call. 

At this point Maisie was becoming weak and tired! Still wouldn’t and hadn’t eaten anything! 

That was the point when I decided to call 111! 

Part 2 Maisie’s diagnosis!!

I called 111 around 4:30pm! I was waiting for around 25 minutes and then a clinician answered and asked me a series of questions witch I answered promptly. 

Given the answers she asked me if it were ok if she called an ambulance, I then agreed!! 

Shortly after I had put the phone down the ambulance arrived! 

The paramedics did a number of tests and said that her heart rate,pulse ect were fine then said can we just check on her blood glucose, I obviously agreed to this. 

Her blood glucose were 26 and her ketones were 7.6 (average ketones are 0.2-0.6).

Given she haven’t eaten for a number of days these were very bizarre results! 

The doctors then decided to call me witch I then rejected the call!

We were taken to the hospital by ambulance and we arrived within 25 minutes. 

Taken straight to the paediatric a and e and was put into the urgent care room. 

After the paramedics had given a hand over to the nurse in charged she came and introduced herself and said that she had phoned the doctor and he was coming to see us shortly. The nurse then left and then returned 10 minutes later with 2 doctors. 

The nurse explained the entire situation with the doctors and then the doctor asked the nurse to do her bloods and put a cannula in her left hand. 

By this time there were 5 nurses in the room, 1 student nurse and 2 doctors. They decided to put her on a drip because she were dehydrated and they needed to get her hydrated quickly! 

The monitor that were holding the drip kept sounding an alarm saying that the fluid had stopped flowing through so they had to put another cannula in her right hand. 

One of the doctors had left shortly before and upon his arrival that’s when We got the devastating news that our baby girl was type 1 diabetic. 

What did this mean for Maisie? 

What did this mean for our family?