TypeOneTom

We arrived at the hospital, and I gently wiggled the sleeping boy out of his cosy seat, silently praying the place wasn’t heaving. It was a Tuesday—surely not prime time for accidents. How chaotic could a Tuesday really be?

We walked into the reception area, handed over our letter, and took our seats. Only two other families were waiting. Brilliant, I thought. We’ll be in and out. Maybe even home in time for tea. My wife and I had barely begun to talk through what the GP had said when a face popped around the door.

“Thomas Brown?”

My wife stood up and disappeared through the door with him. I was left alone with my thoughts—well, not entirely alone. I had a perfect view into the adult A&E waiting area, which provided a surprisingly gripping two-minute drama as I tried to work out why everyone else was there.

Then I heard it—the unmistakable cry of our little boy.

Five minutes later the same face appeared: “Thomas Brown’s dad?”

I gathered the copious number of bags, coats, snacks, and miscellaneous toddler paraphernalia we apparently travel with, and followed her through.

We were directed into a small room with a single bed. Tom was still crying, thoroughly unimpressed with having all his vitals taken. We closed the door and plonked him on the bed with a tactical combination of books, toys, and Bluey on our phones—modern medicine’s real MVP.

My wife and I looked at each other properly for the first time all day.

“Well,” I said, “this is a bit shit.”

We went over what the nurse had explained: they needed to come back to check Tom’s blood sugar and take a blood sample to send off. A little while later, two nurses returned. I won’t go into graphic detail, but the next fifteen minutes involved an Olympic-level wrestling match to keep a very unimpressed toddler still long enough for them to get what they needed. Honestly, that might have been the worst part of the entire ordeal—for me, at least.

When they’d gone, we realised neither of us had eaten. My wife stayed with Tom while I went on a quest for food, which required taking out a small loan so I could buy a meal deal from M&S. I wandered back to A&E clutching a pigs-in-blanket sandwich (which I wolfed down too quickly—strongly not recommended), and found two doctors speaking to my wife.

I don’t remember the full conversation, but the gist was this: Tom’s blood sugar levels were only that high if he had diabetes. They wouldn’t say it outright, because the blood test results had to confirm it, but reading between the lines wasn’t exactly rocket science.

My stomach dropped. Maybe that was the sandwich’s fault. Maybe it was because I suddenly realised I had absolutely no idea what having a toddler with diabetes meant. Either way, it hit hard.

There were tears, cuddles, and kind words from the doctors. They explained we’d be staying in hospital for a while. Tom would get some insulin now to bring his levels down, and then we’d move to a ward. The diabetes team would meet us and talk through what life would look like from here.

Then we were left alone with our thoughts—and our toddler, who had made a miraculous recovery in spirits and was now enthusiastically chasing a plastic bouncy ball around the room. There was a sink in the corner, which Tom discovered head-first while retrieving said ball. Despite everything—no nap, no lunch—he was switching between Bluey and ball-bouncing like an absolute trooper.

A little while later, a nurse arrived and told us we’d be moving to Lion Ward. We gathered our belongings and navigated the maze that is the inside of a hospital before arriving at our bed for the night. I dropped everything onto the floor, sighed, and glanced at my watch.

We had only been at the hospital for four hours, but it already felt like we’d lived an entire day’s worth of worry in that short time.

I stepped out of the ward to phone my mum—Nana to Tom—to let her know what was happening. And I cried.

I’m still not entirely sure why I cried. I didn’t really know anything at that point. I think I cried for the unknown. For Tom, our fearless little boy who had no idea what was going on. For us. For whatever the future might look like now. For relief, maybe.

But mostly, I cried because everything had changed—and we were only just beginning to understand how much.

When I finally wiped my face and walked back inside, Tom was perched on the bed, giggling at something on the screen, completely unfazed by the emotional hurricane his parents had just endured in the corridor. And somehow, seeing him like that steadied me. Whatever came next—appointments, routines, needles, new rules—we’d figure it out. Not because we suddenly felt knowledgeable or strong, but because he needed us to be. And for now, that was enough.

This isn’t a story I ever imagined I’d be writing, and yet here we are — six days into life with a 16-month-old with type 1 diabetes. I’m starting this blog as a way of making sense of it all, of documenting the steep learning curve, the hard moments, the unexpected wins, and everything in between. Not for sympathy and not for dramatics, just for honesty. And maybe, somewhere along the way, it will help another family realise they’re not alone in this strange new world of carb counting, tiny fingers, and strength they didn’t know they had.

———–

The doctor finished checking Tom’s blood and looked up at me.

“You need to go straight to A&E.”

No dramatic pause. No alarms. Just a calm, matter-of-fact sentence in a small GP room. And somehow, I didn’t panic. I felt… weirdly calm. In my head, this was probably just an infection or a virus and we’d be home by bedtime. Easy.

I called my wife and told her the doctor wanted us to go to A&E. She said she’d meet us there. I carried Tom out to the car, clipped him into his seat, and he promptly fell fast asleep — completely unbothered.

I drove with a letter in my pocket, a snoring toddler in the back seat, and absolutely no real understanding of what the next 24 hours was about to bring.

Looking back now, the signs had been there for a while.

Over the previous two or three weeks, Tom had been drinking a lot more water than usual. We blamed it on everything: hand, foot and mouth, teething, a phase. We even mentioned it to nursery one day and they casually replied, “Now you mention it… he does drink more than the others.” Still, nothing felt serious enough to panic about.

Then there was the irritability. The night-time battles. This was a child who had always gone down easily and slept through, but suddenly we were fighting to put him down and we were up two or three times a night and every time, all he wanted was water. We wrote it off as a developmental leap or just… being 16 months old.

To try and calm our own nerves, we started a water diary. Between 900 and 1300ml a day. Nappies so heavy they could have doubled as ankle weights. On the “better” days, we’d convince ourselves we were imagining it all.

Tom also loved his food. Breakfast was usually milk, a banana, Weetabix and toast. A solid start — but apparently not enough, because after we dropped him at nursery he’d go in for what can only be described as his second breakfast. The greedy little hobbit in him was thriving. The nursery app would proudly tell us he’d eaten everything, sometimes seconds. We thought, Great — he’s not fussy and we’re getting our money’s worth.

Looking back, maybe he should have put on a bit more weight for the amount he was eating. But he’s always been active, so again, we brushed it off.

Then, the week everything changed.

My wife picked Tom up on the Monday and nursery mentioned he hadn’t really eaten his lunch or dinner. Our immediate thought? Brilliant. Another illness. And whose turn is it to take time off work this time?

Later that evening, we noticed the white clusters in his mouth. A quick Google and we were fairly confident it was oral thrush.

That same night, we did another Google — one that would quietly change everything.

Symptoms of type 1 diabetes:

Drinking more – Check

Urinating more – Check

Oral thrush -Check

Irritability – Check (although, let’s be honest… whose 16 month old isn’t feral from time to time)

We decided one of us would take him to the doctors the next morning. I took the morning off work, fully and very naively expecting I’d be heading in after lunch.

At 8.30am sharp, I called the GP surgery.

“You are caller number 17 in the queue.”

Thank goodness for the automatic callback system, because I then spent the next half an hour chasing a half-naked, hyperactive toddler around the living room with the world’s smallest plastic pot, trying to capture any wee that I could. No amount of Bluey was going to slow him down. Powered by banana and Weetabix, he moved like a caffeinated monkey.

Forty-five minutes later, I had two small victories: an appointment, and a urine sample sitting in the fridge. (It was only later I discovered the pot was not water tight. A special parenting moment.)

The doctor was brilliant. She listened as I unloaded absolutely everything — symptoms, nursery updates, sleep patterns, then she tested his blood.

25 mmol/L. I don’t know what that meant, I had no clue what a normal reading should be.

Then she looked at me and said the sentence that now feels burned into my brain:

“You need to go straight to A&E.”

And that’s where it truly began.

Not with a dramatic collapse. Not with an ambulance or sirens. Just a calm instruction, a sleeping little boy in the back of the car, and a normal road that was quietly taking us into a life we never planned — but are learning, step by step, to navigate.

If you’re a parent reading this and something about it feels familiar — the constant thirst, the heavier nappies, the disrupted sleep, the irritability that seems bigger than just  “a phase” — please trust your instinct. You are not being dramatic, you are being observant. You know your child better than anyone else ever will. I’m not saying your story will end the same way as ours, but I am saying it is always worth asking the question, even if it feels unlikely or uncomfortable.

For us, that simple question turned out to be the beginning of a very different life — one we are only just stepping into, led by a tiny, fearless boy named Tom, who still just wants his banana, his Weetabix, and most definitely a very well-earned second breakfast.