Tuesday – Trick, No Treats
Oct. 28th, 2008 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
My diabetes turned 31 years old this past week. 31 is a big milestone; it is no longer a young, frisky disorder, but rather a mature disease that has established itself firmly in my life. I should buy it flowers to acknowledge the occasion, I guess. Better yet, I should get it a box of chocolates. My diabetes would appreciate that, as it is a disease with a great sense of humor.
My favorite school picture of myself growing up was the one taken of my in the 3rd grade, because it doesn't look like me at all. Instead of my usual soft features, I was all sharp angles that September. I always liked it because I thought it was the only picture of myself where I looked like my adopted cousin Leslie, with her amazing cheekbones and willowy figure. It is the only picture ever taken of me where I look kind of like a model.
"I hate this picture," my mother once told me, "You were sick, and I didn't realize it."
She suspected something was wrong, though. By the time October rolled around, I had lost 14 pounds, which is quite a lot for an 8 year old of normal proportions. She didn't notice a change in my apatite, but she also didn't realize that my best friend's family ate dinner at 4 o'clock and that I was eating at Laura's house and then going home to eat with my own family at 6 o'clock, by which time I was starving. Literally.
With no insulin, the cells in my body were not able to use the food I was eating. You can fill up a car's gas tank to the limit, but if the ignition can't be turned on the car can't burn any of that fuel. This is what was happening in my body. No matter how much food I took in, my cells were still sending the message to my brain that I was hungry. My brain, figuring we must be in some sort of famine, sent out orders that my fat reserves and muscle should be broken down and consumed. If someone had thought to take my picture every day during this time, you could have seen me grow thinner day by day.
Sugar (in the form of glucose) fuels the human body. Everything you eat, whether it is a cookie, and piece of bread, or a porterhouse steak, must be converted to sugar in order for your body to be fueled by it. The food I was eating was being converted into to sugar, as were the soft tissues of my body that were being broken down due to the perceived famine at hand. Since this sugar could not be burned, it built up in my bloodstream. When my kidneys noticed this, they were overwhelmed, and sent an order to my brain that I needed to drink some water to flush all this stuff out. So I began to drink. And drink. And drink.
I can't describe the thirst; it was intense. I always craved water, and as soon as I drank it I needed to relieve myself, as my kidneys were shouting, "Still too much sugar! Send more water!" If a teacher at school would not let me go to the bathroom, I wet myself in my chair and used facial tissues from the teacher's desk to clean up the mess. I was constantly running to the bathroom. At night, I began wetting the bed. My mother told me not to drink so much water, and took away the glass I kept next to the sink.
"I told you that you couldn't drink water, when you needed it so bad…" my mother said.
"Don't worry Mommy," I told her, "I drank. I had to. When you thought I was washing my hands, I cupped them under the faucet and drank that way. I was so thirsty. I couldn't help it."
It was shortly after my diagnosis, and she was still reeling. I was trying to make her feel better, and willing to risk getting in trouble for drinking water when I'd been told it wasn't allowed.
"Are you mad at me?" I whispered. Even if it meant I might be punished, I wanted her to stop looking like the weight of the world was bearing down on her.
"Of course not," she said, but she looked like she wanted to cry.
One morning in late October she told me I had an appointment with our family physician, Dr. Blackwell. She had called and told him what was going on with me, and he said he needed to take a look at me. When we got to his office, he tested took the jelly jar of my urine that my mother handed him and told her that the results were "not normal." He said he needed to take some blood.
"It may be diabetes," he said as he walked out of the room with the blood sample.
"Oh, I hope not," my mother said.
"Mommy, what's diabetes?" I asked. I had never heard of it.
"I don't think you have it," she said, "It doesn't run in our family. It's a disease where you have to take shots every day, and you aren't allowed eat any sugar. There's no cure for it."
"No sugar at all?"
"Not at all. That's what I hear, at least."
I frowned. Shots? Every day? No sugar at all? No cure? I wasn’t worried. I was a good kid, I figured, and God would not let something like that happened to me. What she had described was my personal 8-year-old version of hell, and only bad people went to hell.
Boy, was I ever in for a theological revelation.
After awhile, the nurse told us that Dr. Blackwell wanted to talk to us in his office. The medical practice was in a spacious, converted 2 story house, and his office was in what was once the formal living room. He sat behind a big desk like a corporate CEO, and my mother sat in the chair across from him. As old as I was, I climbed onto her lap. I weighed so little by then that she didn't complain. He was quite and solemn-faced as he looked at the papers with my test results.
"I'm afraid she does have diabetes," he said.
My mother gasped and blinked her eyes a few times. It is only one of two memories I have of her blinking like that as she processed a piece of information; the other was years later, as she contemplated her own cancer. I now know that on both occasions, she was terrified. Seeing her expression, hearing that I had just been sentenced to hell in spite of the fact that I was a good kid, I let out a wail and burst into tears.
Dr. Blackwell asked me if I wanted to come sit on his lap, but I shook my head and clung to my mother. I wanted nothing to do with the doctor. As far as I was concerned, he had giving me diabetes and was nothing but a big jerk.
"I don't understand how this could happen," my mother said, shaking her head in bewilderment. She spoke slowly, with halting breath. "I've never let her eat a lot of sugar. What could I have done to prevent this?" The way she asked this last question sounding like she was pleading.
"Nothing," the doctor said, "We don't know what causes it in children, but it's more severe than the kind that adults get, and it doesn't necessarily run in families. She'll have to take shots of insulin, there's no way around it. And you'll have to watch what she eats. Still, by in large, she should be able to live a fairly normal life."
That night, I would spend my first night in a hospital since the day my parents brought me home after I was born. The shots made me feel better. I was no longer hungry and thirsty all the time, and the hospital wasn't so bad. I still remember my mother sewing on my Halloween costume by my bed while I practiced giving my rag doll shots with real syringes. I adored the controls on the hospital bed that allowed me to move it up toward the ceiling and fold myself up like a taco. I liked running up and down the hallway until the nurses scolded me and made me go back to my room.
"I think you’re the wellest little sick girl I've ever seen," Dr. Blackwell told me on a visit a few days later.
Thirty one years and thousands of shots later, I'm still hanging in there. I'm a wife and a working mom, not so different from millions of other women. I have, as the doctor promised, a fairly normal life, with fairly normal ups and downs.
Sadly, the person I need to thank for this, who taught me how to take care of myself and to do what I need to do in order to hang on to that normalcy, did not live to see me grown up. I have to look skyward and hope she can hear me when I say, See mom? If you're watching me from Heaven, you know I'm okay. You didn't do anything wrong to make me get sick, but you did everything right to teach me how to stay well. I can't than you enough for that."
After I tell my mom that, I'm going to buy my diabetes some chocolates. Anniversaries are important, and 31 years of living with something should be acknowledged.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
My diabetes turned 31 years old this past week. 31 is a big milestone; it is no longer a young, frisky disorder, but rather a mature disease that has established itself firmly in my life. I should buy it flowers to acknowledge the occasion, I guess. Better yet, I should get it a box of chocolates. My diabetes would appreciate that, as it is a disease with a great sense of humor.
My favorite school picture of myself growing up was the one taken of my in the 3rd grade, because it doesn't look like me at all. Instead of my usual soft features, I was all sharp angles that September. I always liked it because I thought it was the only picture of myself where I looked like my adopted cousin Leslie, with her amazing cheekbones and willowy figure. It is the only picture ever taken of me where I look kind of like a model.
"I hate this picture," my mother once told me, "You were sick, and I didn't realize it."
She suspected something was wrong, though. By the time October rolled around, I had lost 14 pounds, which is quite a lot for an 8 year old of normal proportions. She didn't notice a change in my apatite, but she also didn't realize that my best friend's family ate dinner at 4 o'clock and that I was eating at Laura's house and then going home to eat with my own family at 6 o'clock, by which time I was starving. Literally.
With no insulin, the cells in my body were not able to use the food I was eating. You can fill up a car's gas tank to the limit, but if the ignition can't be turned on the car can't burn any of that fuel. This is what was happening in my body. No matter how much food I took in, my cells were still sending the message to my brain that I was hungry. My brain, figuring we must be in some sort of famine, sent out orders that my fat reserves and muscle should be broken down and consumed. If someone had thought to take my picture every day during this time, you could have seen me grow thinner day by day.
Sugar (in the form of glucose) fuels the human body. Everything you eat, whether it is a cookie, and piece of bread, or a porterhouse steak, must be converted to sugar in order for your body to be fueled by it. The food I was eating was being converted into to sugar, as were the soft tissues of my body that were being broken down due to the perceived famine at hand. Since this sugar could not be burned, it built up in my bloodstream. When my kidneys noticed this, they were overwhelmed, and sent an order to my brain that I needed to drink some water to flush all this stuff out. So I began to drink. And drink. And drink.
I can't describe the thirst; it was intense. I always craved water, and as soon as I drank it I needed to relieve myself, as my kidneys were shouting, "Still too much sugar! Send more water!" If a teacher at school would not let me go to the bathroom, I wet myself in my chair and used facial tissues from the teacher's desk to clean up the mess. I was constantly running to the bathroom. At night, I began wetting the bed. My mother told me not to drink so much water, and took away the glass I kept next to the sink.
"I told you that you couldn't drink water, when you needed it so bad…" my mother said.
"Don't worry Mommy," I told her, "I drank. I had to. When you thought I was washing my hands, I cupped them under the faucet and drank that way. I was so thirsty. I couldn't help it."
It was shortly after my diagnosis, and she was still reeling. I was trying to make her feel better, and willing to risk getting in trouble for drinking water when I'd been told it wasn't allowed.
"Are you mad at me?" I whispered. Even if it meant I might be punished, I wanted her to stop looking like the weight of the world was bearing down on her.
"Of course not," she said, but she looked like she wanted to cry.
One morning in late October she told me I had an appointment with our family physician, Dr. Blackwell. She had called and told him what was going on with me, and he said he needed to take a look at me. When we got to his office, he tested took the jelly jar of my urine that my mother handed him and told her that the results were "not normal." He said he needed to take some blood.
"It may be diabetes," he said as he walked out of the room with the blood sample.
"Oh, I hope not," my mother said.
"Mommy, what's diabetes?" I asked. I had never heard of it.
"I don't think you have it," she said, "It doesn't run in our family. It's a disease where you have to take shots every day, and you aren't allowed eat any sugar. There's no cure for it."
"No sugar at all?"
"Not at all. That's what I hear, at least."
I frowned. Shots? Every day? No sugar at all? No cure? I wasn’t worried. I was a good kid, I figured, and God would not let something like that happened to me. What she had described was my personal 8-year-old version of hell, and only bad people went to hell.
Boy, was I ever in for a theological revelation.
After awhile, the nurse told us that Dr. Blackwell wanted to talk to us in his office. The medical practice was in a spacious, converted 2 story house, and his office was in what was once the formal living room. He sat behind a big desk like a corporate CEO, and my mother sat in the chair across from him. As old as I was, I climbed onto her lap. I weighed so little by then that she didn't complain. He was quite and solemn-faced as he looked at the papers with my test results.
"I'm afraid she does have diabetes," he said.
My mother gasped and blinked her eyes a few times. It is only one of two memories I have of her blinking like that as she processed a piece of information; the other was years later, as she contemplated her own cancer. I now know that on both occasions, she was terrified. Seeing her expression, hearing that I had just been sentenced to hell in spite of the fact that I was a good kid, I let out a wail and burst into tears.
Dr. Blackwell asked me if I wanted to come sit on his lap, but I shook my head and clung to my mother. I wanted nothing to do with the doctor. As far as I was concerned, he had giving me diabetes and was nothing but a big jerk.
"I don't understand how this could happen," my mother said, shaking her head in bewilderment. She spoke slowly, with halting breath. "I've never let her eat a lot of sugar. What could I have done to prevent this?" The way she asked this last question sounding like she was pleading.
"Nothing," the doctor said, "We don't know what causes it in children, but it's more severe than the kind that adults get, and it doesn't necessarily run in families. She'll have to take shots of insulin, there's no way around it. And you'll have to watch what she eats. Still, by in large, she should be able to live a fairly normal life."
That night, I would spend my first night in a hospital since the day my parents brought me home after I was born. The shots made me feel better. I was no longer hungry and thirsty all the time, and the hospital wasn't so bad. I still remember my mother sewing on my Halloween costume by my bed while I practiced giving my rag doll shots with real syringes. I adored the controls on the hospital bed that allowed me to move it up toward the ceiling and fold myself up like a taco. I liked running up and down the hallway until the nurses scolded me and made me go back to my room.
"I think you’re the wellest little sick girl I've ever seen," Dr. Blackwell told me on a visit a few days later.
Thirty one years and thousands of shots later, I'm still hanging in there. I'm a wife and a working mom, not so different from millions of other women. I have, as the doctor promised, a fairly normal life, with fairly normal ups and downs.
Sadly, the person I need to thank for this, who taught me how to take care of myself and to do what I need to do in order to hang on to that normalcy, did not live to see me grown up. I have to look skyward and hope she can hear me when I say, See mom? If you're watching me from Heaven, you know I'm okay. You didn't do anything wrong to make me get sick, but you did everything right to teach me how to stay well. I can't than you enough for that."
After I tell my mom that, I'm going to buy my diabetes some chocolates. Anniversaries are important, and 31 years of living with something should be acknowledged.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
If you didn't think I was strange before, this should fix that.......
Date: 2008-10-28 10:53 pm (UTC)Re: If you didn't think I was strange before, this should fix that.......
Date: 2008-10-29 02:30 am (UTC)31 years of living with something
Date: 2008-10-28 11:28 pm (UTC)Re: 31 years of living with something
Date: 2008-10-29 02:28 am (UTC)Chocolate?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 05:30 pm (UTC)It annoys me to hear the way some people (who usually don't have it) act like it is a death sentence or means zero quality of life. Most of us adjust and life goes on; it's really not that amazing.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 04:59 am (UTC)I'm normal though A1C challenged at times. We all have our challenges. This one is mine.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 11:54 am (UTC)*HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 05:36 pm (UTC)*Hugs back*
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 01:25 pm (UTC)Congrats on a wonderful, prosperous life!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 05:41 pm (UTC)(sorry 'bout making you cry; I thought dudes weren't supposed to admit to that sort of thing)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 05:49 pm (UTC)To tell the truth, I cried a little when I wrote it. I can't think of my mother asking what she could have done to prevent the diabetes without flinching. Until my son was born and I became a mother myself, it never occurred to me how hard my diagnosis was for my own mother to take. She rose to the occasion, but hearing she would need to hit her like a ton of bricks.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 02:09 am (UTC)Behcet's and I now have 12 years together since the diagnosis. Or I guess I count from when it "showed up"...let's see..about 15 years I guess?
It's a neat idea. It shows you have a really great attitude about it. I guess it shows something that I never thought of doing this too:P
But thanks for the post. I do think it's true that any illness a child has is really hard on the parents.
I'm very tired so this is the end of my coherent thoughts but thanks for the post!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 03:01 pm (UTC)Sadly, it doesn't work that way. *sigh*