From the start

Hi, my name is Tanika, I became a mum on 30/8/2016. Since my son was born he struggled to breathe properly in his sleep. While going through this I was so scared my first thoughts as a new mum was shouldn’t this be so much easier, this boy would snore like an old man and I mean it was really loud. I kept taking him to the Drs and the hospital as he would have a very high temp, a rash and would choke on his breastmilk.

When he was 1 year and a half years old, after constantly going to the hospital and demanding them to see him, the Drs finally saw him they told me he had grade 3 and 4 tonsils, the dr then said if he continues to gasp for air in his sleep to record it. I then recorded him during the night and went back to the hospital to show the Dr the videos. The Dr asked us to come back to do a sleep study. When I had taken my son to the sleep study, my son kept gasping for air in his sleep and snoring so loud, the Dr came to the room and said he could see his oxygen rate kept dropping they then gave us more steroids to see if it would help him and told me that if he continues to gasp for air in his sleep then go to Westmead Children’s hospital.

I then took him to Westmead the next morning they had put him in a ward where he then got hand foot and mouth with the blisters on the tonsils which mind you this time both tonsils ended up being grade 4 touching each other the Drs called it kissing tonsils along with having large tonsils, hand foot and mouth he also had a 41-degree temperature. While in there they did a sleep study which they found out he had obstructive sleep apnea so they tried to put him on a machine which ended up breaking as he hated it. So the next day the Drs took him to surgery and had taken out his tonsils and adenoids. After having his tonsils and adenoids taken out he went so much better, sleeping through the night, eating and drinking without choking on the food and he also stopped snoring and gasping for air during his sleep all of this went awesome.

Diabetes Diagnosis

1 year later in 2019 Over the Easter long weekend, Jaxon was very sick was always sleeping, kept wanting to drink and kept urinating so much. when I had taken him to the medical centre I mentioned it to the dr and she did a finger prick and glucose reading on him which at the time was 27 the dr said: “he needs to go to the hospital, it’s a life and death situation.” I was in shock as she was saying this but at the same time, I was scared, blaming myself for not picking it up and worried I had done something wrong. The dr then said “don’t rush and if you have to wait then wait.” When we arrived at the hospital, I was so scared I had contacted my mum to come to support me through this at the hospital. The nurses took Jaxon into the room to do obs on him. The nurses had then paged doctors to come and help him. Jaxon didn’t notice anyone coming through as he was fast asleep and wasn’t staying up too much. Jaxon didn’t even notice nor paid any attention when doctors put a cannula in both arms. His ketones and blood glucose levels were so high it took a while before his sugars came down. They were worried about if his sugars coming down fast in a child too. When the Drs checked his sugars again and he was 28 with ketones that high their meter said HI they put 2 cannulas in his arms 1 in each arm. These nurses then came down to my son’s bed and told me that my boy was being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) I then had to learn how to care for diabetes, learn how to count Carbs. Whilst in hospital learning he is a diabetic the Penrith Football players came in and showed their support by giving children Easter eggs.

The search towards diabetes assistant dog 🐕

In 2019 when I had found out he was a Type 1 diabetic, I had seen another family with a diabetes assistant dog. when I had learned about them I had started researching them and started researching into where we could get one. When I had found Smartpups I had started to look more into them and apply for one, a few months later in May 2020 my son and I were accepted by smartpups to get an assistance dog for my son. An assistance dog for diabetes is amazing they can smell diabetics sugars dropping before the CGM does. These assistance dogs not only save the diabetics life but they can become the diabetics mans best friend.

Since May 2020 my son and I have been fundraising to get to the goal amount $20,000, so my son can get his diabetes assistance dog that could save his life by alerting to his low sugars. Low sugars are very dangerous if not treated right away. This year my son decided not to eat his breakfast right away, he threw a tantrum and then his sugars dropped low that he went unconscious and started to have seizures, I was on the phone to triple zero and I was scared… I was terrified.

When we first started fundraising I asked Smartpups to create a fundraising page for us. https://www.smartpups.org.au/campaigns/smart-pup-for-jaxon-38216/ you can view by clicking on this link. After browsing the fundraising directory I had found Billy G’s Cookie dough, I had then contacted them and started to fundraise through them for a month or two. I shared the link every day and everywhere to try to help my little boy get the assistance dog he needs. I ended up raising some money through it and having quite a few orders the only tough part to it was to deliver everyone’s orders especially during Covid.

While I had been at home I had made up small flyers to share with everyone, the flyers that we made had our link on them until I thought I would add a QR code to it to make it easier for people to find our fundraising site. While walking around my little boy would tell me that he wanted to hand them out, while handing them out he would tell everyone that he has diabetes and that he’s trying to get an assistance dog.

Once we had finished the Billy G’s cookie dough fundraiser I started to look for more ways to fundraise for my little boy. We then found the Krispy Kream fundraiser which I tried to do it I shared it everywhere with no success. After that I never gave up I continued to fundraise while caring for my son’s assistance dog sharing his story on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I then contacted radio shows, I contacted tv stations many never got back to me but I then spoke to A Current Affair who said they would share our story and they would contact us again and film it but then months went by and they forgot to get back in touch with us.

With all the things going on we still never gave up I then got in touch with the Western Weekender and with the Nepean News and our story went out there, because of us getting into the Newspapers we received more donations towards his assistant dog. After that I continued to share his Smartpups link to continue fundraising and asked others to share on their Facebook, we then went on Tiktok and shared all over Tiktok. When I was able to go live on Tiktok I shared our fundraiser live and told everyone on living how diabetes assistance dogs can help diabetics.

When browsing on the internet to find more thing to do to help we came across a site called Raise4Goods with this we started to sell drink bottles, hats, and travel mugs with the Smartpups logo on them along with names on them so everyone who bought one was able to have them personalized. This went awesome we did ok in this. I then kept browsing on the internet and came across another site called the tshirtmill where we can create our designs on shirts so I started to do this so far we sold some and I find it fun and exciting to do this to share what I am passionate for. This is the link to view all our shirts, bags, blankets, and jumpers with things I’m passionate about. http://tanika333.thetshirtmill.com.au/ I am using the tshirtmill to help fundraise for my son’s assistance dog. Whilst I am using the tshirtmill I am also selling some plants I grew on my balcony using aquaponics. I have been placing the plants in a beach trolley and going for walks with my son around our area to sell them, the plants we have been selling are cactus, succulents, and aloe vera.

In November 2020 the most exciting thing happened, the Pop foundation had contacted me to tell me that we were accepted for grant money to go towards his assistant dog fundraiser since we were accepted we now only got to raise the last $2000. We are now excited that we will be getting an assistance dog in the next 13-18 months. I am so excited for my son to be able to go on a journey/adventure towards getting his assistant dog that can alert to his low sugars especially while we are on walks or at the park. I have created a facebook group for everyone to join so they could join in on our adventures by seeing Jaxon get his assistant pup to both of them creating a special bond.

After a few months of learning about diabetes. Learning to check his sugars, learning how to give insulin. Learning how to treat hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia. This has been hard and challenging. We were then asked about putting him on a CGM. We then tried out Dexcom which we then had problems with when it wouldn’t sync up as the phone had updated itself and Dexcom was not ready for it. We then asked our diabetes educators about switching to an insulin pump and asked about a CGM that connects to the insulin pump so we switched over.

Once we went onto the pump Jaxon was going ok for a bit, he then started to have troubles with being sick, whether it’s him getting high sugars and high ketones. So I change the cannula to find that the cannula kept kinking so meant he was not getting any insulin up until we changed canulas. The other sicknesses he kept getting was allergies to the CGM tape the allergies was either a rash, blisters, or skin ripped off from the tape. Several times I have had to contact the hospital for help and advice due to his sugars were either dropping or rising due to illness, and when he got a stomach bug I then had to take him to the hospital overnight due to him kept vomiting and because he was vomiting everything back up which caused him to have high ketones due to dehydration. One of the other troubles Jaxon had was his pump malfunctioned, but before we realized it had malfunctioned we changed the sets twice, once we realized that it was the pump we went back to injections. During all of these troubles, I seem to find myself stressing out, having doubts about myself, and feeling like I have failed. It was worse when he was in daycare as I had felt like nobody would understand especially how he was the first diabetic in that service.

After we both had left the service things started to get better his sugars started to be a bit better with still many dramas and stressful situations like fighting him to eat his food. Since I wasn’t working anymore due to Covid-19 and other reasons. I started to research and look at alternative ways that could help Jaxon. I then found Smartpups looked at them, and then applied with them to get Jaxon a diabetes assistance dog. Which you can read about in my previous post “Our Adventures with fundraising for our assistance dog”.

His sugars were ok until his sugars dropped massively due to the fact he decided not to eat all his breakfast. The low sugars then caused me to have to call triple zero as he went unconscious and started to have seizures. Since we have gone back onto the pump, the same type of pump as before was just replaced. Over four years, this boy has gone in and out of hospitals.

We are currently still fundraising but we only have $2600 to go we would love your help. Thank you in advance. Our blog was recently put into KidSpot.