Diabetic Decision

Today I decided to start this blog on account for myself and whoever even cares to read it. Maybe my reasons are selfish for doing so, because it is for me to talk about my everyday struggles, frustrations, as well as my little triumphs that I face. Another reason is that I am amazed that so many people have diabetes or know people that are diabetics still don't know much about the disease. I have been a diabetic for almost 4 years and STILL don't know everything there is to know about it. Just as I do in every day life, I continue to learn and understand more about this humbling disease/struggle that God has given me. So for starters here is my story.

I was officially diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes December 1, 2004. I had just barely been married August 7, 2004 to the love of my life Brandon. This was a day that would change not only my own life, but Brandon's as well forever. What led up to this you might ask? Well the summer of 2004 was spent working in Houston as a lifeguard/multiple pools manager, as well as in anticipation of my wedding. I noticed that my health and energy that summer seemed different than any other summer that I had come home to work between semesters in college. My body didn't seem to handle the heat like it used to with me feeling nauseous much of the time, endlessly exhausted, and missing lots of work. The scariest things that happened were these strange sensations I experienced where I would get cold sweats, dizziness as if drunk (enter any humorous puns into your thought process here) and getting really bad cases of the shakes. These "episodes" would later be called hypoglycemic attacks/episodes where my blood sugar would get dangerously low. All it took was eating something or drinking something with lots of sugar to help me feel better. I seemed to eat and eat and never feel satisfied, and went to the restroom a lot. The worst thing though was the extreme fatigue I experienced on a day to day basis. Little did I know my body's energy was spent fighting the extremely high blood sugars so no WONDER I was tired all the time. Well my wedding came and went, and the fall semester of my junior year began with me feeling the same. Brandon often expressed concern about me lack of energy and mood swings, but I ignored him because we were poor college students with no health insurance.

My first Thanksgiving as a married gal came and we drove up to Idaho. The drive was something I will NEVER forget. For those of you sensitive to descriptions of bodily functions stop reading NOW. We had had car trouble and got it fixed right before heading to Idaho, during which we decided to go eat at the Golden Corral. I ate normally as I did back then... all the fried chicken, and whatever other artery-clogging assortments of food to be found. That was my first mistake. It was a good 6 hours to Cambridge where Brandon was from. Let's just say we stopped just about every half hour to 45 minutes in order for me to let the food pass through me like I had drank an entire bottle of turbo-lax twice over. I was horribly sick and equally as miserable. At first I just thought it was food poisoning. Looking back, I would trade that for the impending diagnosis any day.

Over the course of that week I found myself drinking whatever non-alcoholic beverages I could get my hands on. I was a beverage drinking fiend! The ever popular over-indulgent, packing on the pounds of flubber and squish squish Thanksgiving Thursday came and I was beyond miserable. The day after I started to notice that I felt worse and worse. Sunday morning before we left to drive back to school, I woke up with my vision totally blurry and fogged up. Almost over night my vision went from a perfect 20/20 to not being able to differentiate people's faces who stood 10 to 15 feet away from me. Talk about horrifying! I realized something was extremely out of whack (not just my mind folks!) and it freaked me out. My vision driving back to Logan that night was even worse. Monday morning, I wasted no time going to my classes and then headed straight for the student health center with Brandon. I described my symptoms to the docs there and they sent me to an opthamologist to test my vision. Then I was sent over to get my blood glucose tested (the test that shows the level of sugar in your blood) and went home and waited for them to call me back in. The next morning they called me in and told me that I had elevated amounts of sugar in my blood. This obviously translated to meaning that my blood sugar (abbreviated as "BS.. haha don't laugh) was off the ricter scale of normal levels. Normal levels are anywhere between 80 and 120 before you eat, or up to 160/170 for non-diabetics after you eat. MINE WAS 583... nearly 5 times the amount of a person without diabetes. I have heard of higher though, so I was what I consider "lucky". Other people I know ended up in the hospital with a glucose of over 900. So anyway, they immediately set me up with a Diabetes Educator who would give me my first syringe with insulin and tell me to give myself a shot. That is another moment I will not soon forget. Brandon and I just sat there and cried together. I was told that I would be okay, and that diabetes was manageable if I just knew how to count carbs and match that with my insulin intake. As if I didn't hate math enough in school, I was being instructed how to add, multiply, divide and subtract numbers in my head just to survive on a day to day basis! It was all so overwhelming. I would go to the grocery store and walk up and down the aisles in tears not knowing what I could or couldn't eat because it was all so new to me. I would stare at nutrition label after another to see how many carbs everything had. My life felt like it had been dictated as to what I could eat, when I could eat, and how much I could eat. I was told to eat something every 3 hours or so to maintain stable BS's and that was NOT cool to me. I was told that as a result of my insulin regimen I would without a doubt gain weight, and then have it be difficult to take off! I felt like I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn't.

The months following this experience, as with all traumatic things came with it's ups and downs. I have gone through serious periods of denial, eating whatever I wanted. I have learned from this enough to know that even though in recent years not all foods with sugar have been BANNED from my diet, there are just certain things I can not eat because I know I will pay for it afterward. I have learned that if I eat crap, I will feel like crap. If I eat well, I will feel fantastic. My disclaimer about this is the fact that it is so true that even if you are taking care of yourself and eating all the right things, diabetes remains a very unpredictable disease and you experience high and low BS's.

The way I eat now is in nearly direct contrast to what I used to eat. I avoid all the foods that people consider "fun" to eat. My relationship with food is forever changed. Coming to realize this concept and to abide my eating habits by it has been a long time coming. I am not perfect though. I still have my cravings for chocolate (what girl doesn't??) and sugary things, but I don't eat them nearly as often as I used to, and in moderation most of the time.

Tomorrow or maybe the next day I can blog about what I have learned about myself through being a diabetic. Who knows what that might entail.