Did you know that more than 3000 years ago the ancient Egyptians talked about a condition of the body that caused excessive urination, thirst, and weight loss? It’s true. They figured out diabetes. 

     And, in ancient India some clever people discovered that they could use ants to test for diabetes. How? They would present urine to ants. If the ants made a beeline to the golden liquid, it was a sign the urine was sweet. Madhumeha. Sweet as honey. 

     I may have learned about it in one of the hospital waiting rooms. The tables were marked with coffee stains and a jumble of slick covered magazines, muted yellow covered journals – official and fact filled. I read articles, short stories, captions under charts and illustrations. But I know I didn’t learn about it from your pediatrician. He never tested your urine. Out of ants and urine dipsticks, I guess.

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These days I can read medical charts. I honed that skill during the days, weeks, and then months that your dad was in cardiac critical care at Lenox Hill Hospital. He came home and you ended up in pediatric critical care at New York Weill Cornell. So, I continued my rounds. 

     The color of waiting rooms ranged from beige to ecru to cheery yellow. The critical care unit, soft white with tall windows. Sunlight bounced off the river and real air rattled at the windows begging to come inside. 

     I leaned over the metal rails of your oversized hospital bed and whispered to you. I inserted my voice into your semiconscious dreams. I touched your skin, your pale cheeks, and watched for your parchment thin eyelids to pop open. 

     How could this wild child be so still? This cheeky, sweaty faced boy, hair in soggy strawberry blond ringlets chasing the dog, going up and down the slide at St. Vartan’s park. I whispered to you, certain that despite the clacks, buzzes, and wonky wheeled medical equipment in this too large space your ear would catch my words. 

     My dry lips to your ear I tell you, “I am here waiting for you. There is an invisible thread between us. Wander where you will, I am here waiting for you.”

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 Some of us stretch our arms wide and embrace it all. Some of us leap first, learn later. You incautious boy, you rushed in, took it on. A dare to pull down your pants and pee on the cushy foam playground mats under the principal’s office window? Done. During recess, of course. 

     A truth bender but never an out and out liar. You earned your nicks, dings, and scars by tasting, touching, smelling it all. At the age of reason. Eight years of trial and error. 

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     Do you remember the fall afternoon when you were six and I sat you on a gray wooden split rail fence to watch a pasture filled with grazing horses? One by one they were drawn to you. They sauntered over to whinny and nuzzle you. They gathered to be as near you as they could from their side of the fence. They leaned against you, waited for your chubby hand to stroke them. Their long tongues licked at you, tasting your sweetness.

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     But back to the discovery of diabetes, your diabetes. The team of doctors put you into a medically induced coma. They began hemodialysis. Cleansing your blood through machines and miles of tubing. 

     Sometimes the kidneys will kick start on their own. Or maybe not. The doctors promised nothing. They never do. And if one does, it’s a lie.

     The second night you were moved to a three child ICU. By morning, Dr. Steinberg told me a neurologist had been called. Why? Your brain was swelling, and a hard-headed cranium will crush the curvaceous, crenulated loops and whorls of all you are. 

     Enter Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, neurosurgeon, inventor of ways to save the traumatized brain. Intense and dark-eyed, he came to drill a tiny bore hole in the right temporal portion of your young skull. There he inserted a catheter, a pressure cooker valve, to tap fluids. To make room for your brain.  

     How much assault and insult can a human vessel endure before splitting open, spilling all its contents? We waited. We watched for a signal, for a rebirth. 

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Each morning at 6:00 a.m. before we left for the hospital, your dad would call the ICU. That Wednesday, fourteen days after you were admitted, ten days after Dr. Ghajar put a hole in your head, your kidneys kicked in, and you woke up. Urine. Yellow, sweet as honey began to flow.  Drinks on us!

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Cell by cell, you are reborn. You even shed layers of skin. Your dark brown eyes newly awakened, you study each face as though to learn the language of expression. 

     We celebrate your homecoming and a reunion with your school mates. They surround you, chatter at you. Poke, prod, and hug you. You quietly take it all in as though you have just landed from another planet. Maybe you have. 

     You no longer smile or laugh. Or maybe you’ve forgotten how. 

     So, I smile at you as I did when you were an infant. Each day an awakening. See, this is the look of joy and hope. Maybe today we can find your memories. I am patient. I will wait and remember for both of us.