Winter, 1991- She told me one day that she thought she was pregnant. A pregnancy test revealed that she was indeed going to have a baby. I was worried more than ever. We had found out just before her dad died that he had abnormal chromosomes. There was a big chance she carried the genes, her half sister had given birth to a baby born without arms, legs and roof of the mouth. I immediately took her to a doctor to get her tested. We found out that what I dreaded the most was true. She does have the bad genes. Now we had to wait 3-4 months to test her baby.

June, 1991- I was so afraid of what I would see on the ultra sound that I wouldn't look at it until I heard the nurse say "look at him he's sucking his thumb". I knew right there and then that he was going to be okay. All the babies born with the defects had no arms. Now they performed a test that revealed that he was not going to be a carrier. There was no chance of him carrying it down to his kids. For the first time since I found out she was pregnant, I was happy she was. It might be the only child she'll have that would be normal. She had one chance in six to give birth to a normal baby that didn't carry the genes.

November, 1991- In mid November, Danny left her. She became very depressed, crying all the time and not able to keep down her food. I had to take her to the hospital for dehydration. She weighed 110 pounds before her pregnancy and now she weighed under 100 pounds and due to have her baby any day.

November 20, 1991- She had a healthy baby boy, weighing 7 pounds. She named him Dustin Allen Ware. 2 days after we took him home, he got diarrhea real bad and bloody stools. He was allergic to cow's milk. He spent a week in the hospital to try different milk-free formulas.

Tania went back to school a week after Dustin was born. Her and Danny got back together. I let him move in with us, because she & Dustin would have moved away. They were safer living with me than with Danny's mom. The abuse continued anyway.

September, 1992- Little Dustin was really affected by their fighting. At ten months of age, he knew what was going on. I tried to occupy him during their arguments but he still would cry and shake. Sometimes, I had to put him down to referee his parents. He was a very smart kid. He started humming Barney the Dinasaur's song "I love you" before he could even talk.

June, 1993- She graduated at the top of her "Machine Trade" class at a Technical School. She got a full time job as a machinist at a local factory.

Short time later, she fell madly in love with her foreman, a married man with children. One afternoon while she was meeting with him in a bar parking lot, his wife came along and seen them together. Tania got in her truck and came home and he took off like a mad man towards his house with his wife behind. He had been drinking and a few miles from his home, he had an accident and died instantly with his wife witnessing the whole thing. Tania took it pretty hard. I guess she was always attracted to the wrong guys.

April, 1994- Tania & Dustin were living in town. On her way to my house to drop Amber & Dustin off before work, her pick-up truck got hit by another truck. She injured her neck and wasn't able to work for 6 weeks. 2 days after the 6 weeks were up, she got a paper from her doctor to go back to work the following Monday. As she walked in the office, to report back to work, her boss that unsuccesfully tried to get her to bed, told her she was FIRED for reporting to work 2 days after her 6 weeks were up. We both knew the real reason she was fired.

Spring, 1995- Dustin, (3 1/2) was a happy, fat little boy and a handfull for me. I had three other grand-kids to watch, including another boy just turned 4.

June, 1995- Tania, her boyfriend Dave, Dustin & I left for Canada to go meet her sister Danielle. See Chapter 8.

Spring, 1997- Tania & Dustin moved to Toledo. She had been working at Mitchell Equipment in Toledo and attending college after work. She again lost her job because of Sexual Harassment. She sued the company, but she had to settle out of court for a small amount, because she needed money to pay her bills.

She was having bad drug problems still. Getting involved with the wrong guys again but as far as I know, none were abusive to her or Dustin. She worked as a topless dancer for a while, then she took on a waitress job. She stayed in College a while longer and she couldn't make ends meet. She was getting student loans but it wasn't enough. She sold some acid to help her pay the bills.

August, 1997- Dustin started going to an all-day kindergarten. He was such a nice, smart kid at school but had real bad behavior problems at home. He wasn't gaining any weight, he looked like a telephone pole. His mom & I took him to the pediatrician many times, because we were worried he had juvenile diabetes like his dad's brother & sister. We told him that I checked his sugar and it was above normal. The doctor would tell us that he was too young for diabetes, that he would test him when he was 8 or 9 yrs old. He also said that the kid was the right size for his age.

May, 1998- I helped her move to a different neighborhood in Toledo. School was nearly out for the year, so she let Dustin finish the year at the same school. The last day of school, they called Tania to go pick him up, he was very sick. She took him to his doctor and demanded to have him tested for Diabetes. He refused to see him (probably because she had no health insurance) and told her to just leave a sample of his urine with the nurse, he would get it analysed. That was on a Thursday afternoon.

The following Saturday morning, she called me, not knowing what to do. He was constantly drinking and vomiting and he looked dehydrated. I went to Toledo and brought my glucometer with me to check his sugar. The machine registered "HI". I called the Children's hospital and I was told to get him in there now, if we lived close by or call an ambulance. They lived only a few blocks from the hospital so we took him in. The poor kid was so thirsty on the way there that he drank some old coffee I had in a mug, then he'd vomit it.

As soon as we got to the emergency room, they rushed him in. His sugar was 1,250. (Normal is 70-110.) They couldn't believe that he was still alive or not having a stroke. They put him in intensive-care immediately. The specialist that attended to him told us that if his doctor analysed that urine sample 2 days earlier, he would have known for sure that he had diabetes. It takes a lot more than a few days to get sugar reading that high. He was being poisoned by ketones and he's lucky to be alive. Just then, I realized how lucky I was to be a diabetic, because it gave me the chance to save my grandson's life.