He refused to go back to the hospital so his mum took him to a local doctor.
“I got told he probably had a tummy bug,” Kirsty told Newshub.
He went home with some anti-nausea pills but still went rapidly downhill.
“It was like he couldn’t move. I can’t even describe how he was on the bed,” said Kirsty
“His cheekbones were out – he had already lost 19kgs.”
They returned to hospital, where they told the medical staff his symptoms, and had blood tests.
Again, after waiting for hours, he went home against medical advice.
But things got worse. By midnight, Kirsty thought her son was dying and called an ambulance.
“I told them straight away what was going on, they pricked his fingers, sugar was through the roof, that was it, off to Waikato,” she said.
The ambulance staff, she said, suspected Austin had type 1 diabetes – and he had a serious complication, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), where the body can’t produce enough insulin.
“You go into a diabetic coma, or you die, I mean it’s scary stuff,” she said.
Austin was raced to hospital for insulin. But mum and son say he had to wait more than five hours.
“If you are left in a DKA state for too long, you get inflammation of the brain, it’s dangerous mate,” said Kirsty.
Austin feared he was going to die.
“I felt like I was barely breathing… I didn’t have a pulse on me,” he told Newshub.