Xyliah was born in the early morning of April 23, 2017, weighing in at 5 lbs 15 oz—a healthy, beautiful baby girl and my newfound love. She loved to sing, play with dollies, and mostly talk about her dream of becoming a doctor someday.

Fast forward to the summer of 2019, I received a frantic phone call stating that I needed to hurry to the hospital because Xy was being rushed in, was unresponsive, and had a glucose level of 897. Upon arrival, I was informed that my healthy baby was admitted for DKA and was being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

So many questions ran through my mind—how could this be, how did I miss this, and where did it stem from? To give some additional backstory, Xy has an older sister, Zenobia, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome at birth. She was hospitalized for a week until she stabilized.

Once discharged, we were in for the change of our lives—one that no one was ready for, especially Xy. She went from living a carefree life of a 9-year-old to being told that, in order to live a long, happy, and healthy life, she now had to administer medication multiple times a day for the rest of her life.

This has been a battle that we are still fighting. We have had multiple hospital stays, other organs being affected due to the diabetes, and several scares—the most recent being in May of this year, when we had our first run-in with a diabetic seizure. Despite these challenges, Xy continues to keep a smile on her face and navigate as best as she can with this life-altering change.

She is and will always be my right-hand man, fighter, and, most of all, my baby girl.

– As told by Xyliah’s Mom