Diabetes: Life-Changing diagnosis?

Sorry I haven't been posting as much lately.  I've got my 3-month checkup coming up in a couple of weeks, and an optometrist appointment in the same approximate time frame.  Well, I haven't made them yet, but I will this week.

I did have lunch this week, a friend from work who works for another company.  He heard through channels about my diagnosis, and when I talked to him on the phone a couple months ago, he called the diagnosis "life-changing".

In many ways, it is life-changing.  I wish I could count all the donuts, cookies, candies etc. that I've turned down.  Not because I have to, but because I wasn't inclined to bolus right then. :)  I had butter pecan ice cream at lunch today - Yarnell's - so I'm not being held down by the diabetes police, or whatever. :)

But I try very hard not to think about it that way. I think that puts too much emphasis on the hardship of the disease, and I'd rather not do that. It's true, the disease comes with its hardships. There are days I feel like a human pincushion. I deliberately pushed a needle into my own body 9 separate times today, and today was fairly typical. Most of the time it doesn't hurt much, sometimes it doesn't hurt at all, but I still flinch a little when I do my fingersticks and every once in a while I hit a blood vessel when I bolus. That hurts, and leaves a nasty-looking bruise.

But I don't want to focus on those things. I like focusing on the difference between my condition now and my condition in, say, August when I was too tired to do much of anything. I like to think about how I'm under fairly good control now, and in good shape to avoid all the complications of this disease.

Has the diagnosis changed my life? Sure it has. But it hasn't all been bad. I'm eating better (and eating a lot less). I'm enjoying a lot of the things I eat a lot more, since a lot of the stuff I used to eat was carb-loaded, and those have a lot more meaning to me now.

It would be nice if I could just grab a handful of M&M's and munch on them like my pancreas worked right, but that would be silly. It's a bolus now or later kind of thing.

People still occasionally hear about the diabetic routine and say, "I don't think I could do that." I've seen some more people on TV who do not take care of their diabetes like they should. (The current Biggest Loser field has two admitted Type 2's, one of whom was eliminated last night.) I know people who haven't taken care if it. Most of those outcomes are not ideal for the patients in question.

I'm going to take care of mine. I prefer not to think of it as life-changing, because there's a lot more to my life than that. I prefer to think of the things that haven't changed, and hopefully won't, because I'm taking care of it.

Coming to Grips

I thought this post would be easier to write.  It was intended to be the second post, but others intruded, and this one...seemed to want to wait.

So my official diagnosis day was 10/2/2009.  That was around noon, when my morning blood work came back.

But I really view the beginning of my life with Diabetes as beginning on the Monday after that, 10/5.  That's when I had the followup with my doctor, and when it all really sunk in.  Also, when I got my glucometer and my first batch of insulin and insulin supplies.

But...I'm dawdling. :)  This is catharsis about my actual discovery.

In retrospect, I think some of my memories of the Friday morning and Monday morning are a bit confused, conflated.

So, on the Friday afternoon, I was told that I was, for certain, diabetic.  I had set up a followup with my physician for Monday morning, as they wanted to start treating me right away.  My test results confirmed that, with a 330 BG and an a1c of around 13.  (Need to find out exactly what it was for my records.)

The Monday appointment was one of the longest hours of my life.  In fact, I don't know exactly how long I was in the office.  Time seems to warp around significant events.

I remember hearing a lot about how to take insulin, and the use of the pen being demonstrated for me.  I got a basic formula for how much to take and how often, how much to take for correctives, the difference between Levemir and Novolog.  Stuff like that.

All I'd been hoping over the weekend (knowing that I was diabetic, but not knowing too much about what that meant) was that I wouldn't have to be on insulin.

So here was my insulin.

The big thing I remember:

Fear.  I remember being so very afraid, afraid of complications, afraid of insulin overdose, afraid of all the things I didn't know.  Which was a lot.  Still is, though I feel like I've learned an awful lot in the month that's gone by since then.

I almost broke down into tears at least three times during the appointment.  I was a mess.  I remember not being able to find my way out of the doctor's office diagnostic area, but I'm pretty sure that's a memory from Friday morning instead of Monday morning.  I've never had a great sense of direction, and it's especially bad when I'm under stress.  Ironic, since I'm a network engineer by profession.

It helped a lot that the nurse told me she was diabetic, and taking shots.  I had taken allergy shots as a kid, so giving myself injections wasn't the worst idea in the world.  Still, I wasn't looking forward to it.  I didn't know how invasive the new treatment regime would be, and I was a little afraid that people wouldn't understand, and would think less of me because of it.

I was still a mess when I left the office.  My next stop was to go to the pharmacy to pick up my first batch of prescriptions.  I waited over 2 hours, while several...discrepancies...were worked out between what my health insurance was willing to cover and what I'd been prescribed.  And the pharmacy was unusually busy.

I also remember picking up a 24-can case of Diet Mt. Dew.  I had never before in my life deliberately bought diet cola for myself, that I can remember.  But I knew that the sugar in regular would do me much more harm than good.  It was one of the first milestones in my acceptance of my condition.

I got a referral to talk to the local CDE on Tuesday afternoon - apparently someone had cancelled.  Lucky me. :)

I did my first glucose test Monday night - and took my first Levemir dose.  More on those later.  The glucose test was especially comical. :)

Prelude to D-Day

I had a growing sense that there was something wrong with me.  But it hadn't reached a critical mass for me to feel like I needed to see a doctor.

I'm 36 years old, and I weigh about 160 pounds.  I'm a technology professional, and I live a fairly sedentary life.  I don't have a family history of diabetes to speak of.  (There are some qualifications there, but suffice it to say that it wasn't really on my radar.)

Of course my wife could tell there was something wrong with me.  She had been after me since March to get myself checked out.

I knew I'd been losing weight.  Being in the state I was in, I hadn't been watching my weight very closely.  I figured I normally weigh around 170.  I'd been eating tons of ice cream and other sugary stuff, and drinking close to a gallon of water a day.  I'd been urinating at night, but not thinking much of it.  Diabetes is a disease of older and heavier people, right?

An opportunity came up for me to take a life insurance paramedical exam at the end of August, which I did.  I figured if there was anything seriously wrong with me, the blood test would show it.

...and did it ever.

My blood glucose was 370, and my A1C was 13.0.  I didn't know exactly what that meant, but the insurance agent called me and told me quite directly, "You need to see a doctor.  Today, if possible."

I could tell she was serious.

I was busy teaching a class the week the results came in.  My wife was happy to set an appointment up for me with our GP (since she'd been trying to convince me to do it for a few months.)

I figured that it was just a fluke, since the blood test was done after a regular gaming session, which inolves the consumption of lots of Mt. Dew and pizza - the sorts of things that tend to drive up blood sugars.

So I still wasn't worried.

On Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, I went in for my appointment and had the blood work done to confirm or refute what I learned from the insurance exam.