Diabetes: The Revenge!

That titles needs a tagline. "Diabetes is back, and this time it's out for blood!" Because diabetics should check their sugar four times a day. Get it? "Out for blood"?

Yeah, it's non-stop laughs here.

When last we left off, Dr. Needles had just told a woman who'd buried her eldest child four years prior that her current oldest "could be dying."

The afternoon turned into madness after the doctor visit. The incubator called my Dad and left a message at his job in Brooklyn that I needed to be hospitalized. Dad tried to call back, but the incubator already had me in the car and on the way to the hospital that was on the Nassau County/Queens border. Dad drove all the way home from Brooklyn, was told where I was being taken, and drove almost half the distance back toward his workplace to meet us at the hospital.

Before leaving the doctor's office, he warned that I shouldn't be fed anything. Food was bad. So what was the first thing that happened when I was admitted to the hospital? They fed me. Two hot dogs and some milk. They also gave me a shot of... something. (We know what it was, but seven-year-old me didn't.) They also started an IV, which I wasn't happy about, but the nurse told me that the IV bottle - yes, this was back in the "IV bottle days" - had a steak dinner in it, so I was technically eating even more! Her trick kind of worked. I was still hungry, what with my body not being able to process fuel at the moment, but the thought that the IV was feeding me continuously kept me from complaining about the lack of food.

I slept that first night in the pediatric ward hallway. They were full up, so I had to wait for someone to be discharged the next morning. And who did they put the newly diagnosed diabetic in with? A kid who'd just had some kind of throat surgery and was basically being fed a steady diet of hard candies and ice cream.

It occurs to me that I failed to say how much time had passed between the strep throat and the diabetes diagnosis. In that time, my immune system was chewing up my beta cells, obliterating my ability to make insulin. And what kept me from slipping into a hyperglycemic coma in those two week? Once again, all I have is a theory that's impossible to prove. It's called "the honeymoon period." It's brief period after the onset/diagnosis of diabetes when the diabetic seemingly gets better. They might even experience perfectly normal blood sugars during this period. Almost like the pancreas is going through its death throes, coughing up the last of its insulin. It's my belief that that's how I survived before my official diagnosis.

Back to my diagnosis and hospitalization...

On the day I was relocated to a room, I was handed Mister Hypo is My Friend. This was the beginning of the gods-awful diabetes education I'd receive. Y'see, reading was all well and good, but that didn’t mean I was comprehending the words. The book was supposed to be telling me that I had a serious chronic illness, but I wasn’t getting that message. There was a line inside the cover to put the patient’s name, but no one filled out that part when the booklet was handed to me. As a result, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me, and I couldn’t fathom why it’d been given to me. And how is anyone, adult or child, supposed to take “Mr. Test Tube” and “Dora Dropper” seriously?

No, the thing I remember most clearly during that week in the hospital - the part of my education that really struck home - was when I was told there'd be no more cake, candy, or ice cream in my life. Those things had been staples in my childhood diet. Now they were to go the way of the dodo. What's more, the thing that a child dreads most about anything medical was now going to be a daily part of my day: injections.

Well, I did what any other kid would do receiving all of this "good" news: I lost it. Through a great many tears, I started screaming denials about the restraints being placed on my existence, stood from the conference table where my parents and I were being educated, and stormed out of the room... completely forgetting to bring my IV pole with me. The pole followed because it was connected to my forearm, top first, falling over and luckily being stopped by a lounge chair before it could shatter on the tiled floor. After ensuring that a new IV wouldn’t need to be started, the incubator yelled at me for being... well, an upset child. That I was upset and a child didn't seem to matter to her.

I wouldn't understand my psychological state at that time until much later in life. And what brought clarity to me was the large envelope filled with letters from my second grade classmates that I received. Their crayon inscribed notes wished me well and a speedy recovery. What I seemed to notice most was that many misspelled “hospital.” There was also the fact that somewhere in my gray matter was the knowledge that my classmates had been coerced into writing those notes, making their well-wishes hollow sentiments. As for a speedy recovery, that wasn’t going to happen. I was going to have diabetes forever!

This ends the tale of my diagnosis. Despite being well-read in general and self-educated specifically on the topic of diabetes, those things came later. Instead, I was about to embark on some of the dumbest behavior a diabetic can engage in. Monumentally destructive things that were assisted by still worsening diabetes education and the incubator.

I'd like to remind you, however, that this isn't necessarily a linear story, and that I might well discuss one of my other favorite aspects of being a diabetic next time: depression or diabetic neuropathy. Oooh! Or maybe diabetic retinopathy! Yeah, that could be fun!

I'll see all of you non-existent readers in the near future with another exciting post.