Diabetic Alert Dog For Camden

April 20, 2015, was a life changing day for 4-year-old Camden. Actually, my whole family’s life changed! I had noticed that Camden was having night time accidents. I had attributed this to the fact his mom (my daughter) moved to Grants Pass to be closer to Camden and his little brother Ryder. The boys had been with me for a little over two years in foster care, and I had adopted them. My daughter had been clean for over a year and was ready to start being part of their lives again.

Then while we were out at the river Camden kept asking for more and more water! I called the doctor for an appointment. I told the doctor that I was worried Camden was showing the symptoms of Diabetes. The doctor at the Grants Pass Clinic tested Camden and his blood sugars were over 580! The Doctor SENT US HOME! We were told to bring him back in the morning for a lab test. I took him home and he had cucumbers and water and I borrowed a meter from my mom and tested him it just read HIGH!

I took Camden straight to the emergency room. It was very busy in the emergency room but I was able to explain that I thought he was an undiagnosed DIABETIC! They were able to get us back fairly quickly then. His blood sugars were over 800 at this point! They started him on an IV, and kept it running. He got so swollen from all of the fluid. Then they sent us to Portland to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

We spent most of the week at Doernbecher learning about diabetes. Camden had to adjust to getting poked up to 10 times a day and receiving 4-5 insulin shots a day! We had to learn how to measure and give him his shots, calculate insulin to carb ratios, test for ketones and this was just the beginning! There are so many scary aspects to diabetes.

We have had to make a lot of adjustments in our lives. Camden was also diagnosed 12 days before my fiance and I had planned to get married. It was very stressful time but we still managed to pull it off. We even brought Camden on our honeymoon weekend because we were still in the process of training our childcare provider. We now go to Doernbecher every 3 months.

We have had some very scary moments! One night I went to check him and he had vomit all over him and was sound asleep I woke him and he weakly said I got sick! I was so worried I got him cleaned up and tested him and he was 44! I got him some juice and he promptly vomited. I called Doernbechers and I learned that night to keep Zofran on hand. We don’t get much sleep at night. So many things can affect his blood sugars! In one month we caught over 40 lows!!

Nights are the worst, and I fear while we are all sleeping he could be seizing or slipping into a diabetic coma or running too high and going into diabetic ketoacidosis. He is tested at breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, bed time, 11pm, 2am, and 5am! During the day now he can sometimes feel when he is low and lets us know. We are continuously learning more and more about type 1 diabetes and to be honest, it scares me so many things can go wrong!

We have made it through the 1st year of his life with diabetes. Camden is now 5 and getting ready to start school. I am so nervous to let him out of my sight! We do have a continuous glucose monitor for him now but because we had a faulty unit it came off continuously and if he wasn’t falling off it was turning itself off. And he complains it hurts his tummy. Well, I’m not about to hold him down and force him to have it.

I have tried to convince him to give it another try but no luck yet. We started fundraising last year to get him a diabetic alert dog. To date, we have raised $140.00 with our Go Fund Me, which I have failed miserably at fundraising. A diabetic alert dog is anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 and no insurance does not help at all with this. I have been doing online research and ordering any books I can find on training our own diabetic alert dog. I have been watching hours of videos etc trying to learn how we can train our own diabetic alert dog. I am excited today to say we have found a wonderful labradoodle puppy.

Max will be trained by me and Camden. We are starting with puppy kindergarten, and then followed by 4-5 additional training courses and clicker training. The puppy cost us $800 and the classes are about $600 in total which is way more affordable. We do have a contingency plan; we will wait to neuter Max until we see if he is picking up on scent training. If he does not pick up scent training then we will breed him and have the pick of the litter to try again.

I know this is this may not work but it is the best option I have found so far! We may not be able to train the diabetic alert dog well enough to be able to go to school with Camden but our hope is we can train him well enough that especially at night he will catch Camden’s lows. Please keep our family in your prayers as we continue our type 1 diabetes journey.

Help Donate for Camden’s Diabetic Alert Dog.