Baffled my 9-yr-old is diabetic

When my nine-year-old suddenly started wetting the bed years after he had stopped, I noticed he drank water all of the time.
When I mentioned this to a close friend who is a nurse, she said I should bring him to the teaching hospital where she worked, she suspected he must have symptoms of diabetes. I was skeptical until a blood test confirmed it; my son had an insulin-dependent diabetes.
He was placed on admission straightaway and I was told it was lucky I brought him as the glucose levels in his blood were too high. At the level he was, he could have fallen into a coma.

The puzzling thing is that there’d been no history of diabetes in my family or my husband’s, so, why would my son develop it now at such a tender age? He’s since been treated and placed on daily insulin injection.

Diabetes isn’t necessarily hereditary, anybody can get it. According to medical findings, it can appear suddenly, especially in children or young people. Your son’s body obviously wasn’t producing enough insulin, the hormone that turns glucose into energy.
So, to try to give him the energy he needed, his body was producing even more glucose, but it wasn’t being used - it was building up in his blood and urine instead. That’s why he’d been weeing so much during the night - to get rid of the excess.
Juvenile diabetes, also known as Type 1 or insulin-dependent diabetes, usually develops from birth to age 30. It is not very common and the cause is not known.
Symptoms include drinking lots of water and urinating more, especially at night, wetting the bed, weight loss, headaches, tiredness, vomiting and problems with vision.
There is no cure, but juvenile diabetes can be managed with a strict diet, blood tests and daily insulin injections.
(Bunmi Sofola)