Death by Stubbornness

Every two years, I get CPR certified as part of my job requirements. And so every two years, I watch the lame safety video on offer about all the various diseases/conditions/ailments/disasters that might befall people on my watch and which I, as a First Responder, now have a duty to, well, respond to.

There's anaphylactic shocks and EPI Pens, choking, asthma, and of course, good old T1D and hypoglycemia. While I hated the feeling of watching a safety video about myself, I did think it was interesting the part of hypoglycemia they chose to highlight---the attachment to tasks and resistance to eating/addressing the problem. The actor is trying to finish some paperwork, and getting increasingly frustrated and unable to complete the task. Yet when his concerned friend suggests that he check his blood glucose and eat a snack, he repeatedly refuses and remains focused on the task at hand.

I think, to a non-T1D person, this might be hard to understand. You have a "condition." You're obviously not well. Your body is *literally* sending you signals that you are dying right now. Because you are. Your brain, picky eater that it is, is starved for glucose and will shortly no longer be functioning as you'd like it to. Your systems will shut down, one by one, and in a way, it will seem as though you have died of stubbornness.

I know that there is some counterintuitive neurological explanation for all of this. Your body is being flooded with                       and yada yada yada. But I also think that this symptom taps into an essential weakness in a T1D person's personality. And that is, simply, to not have to deal with diabetes. To not have it. To climb a flight of stairs and eat the dinner they want to prepare, rather than hastily devour a granola bar on the front landing while the neighbor's kids watch. To have a conversation with the person addressing them, rather than mumbling "mhmm, uh-huh" distractedly while chugging a juice.

And so, while you're at your weakest, you have to be strong with yourself. You have to admit, I'm sick. I need a break. I need to be awkward, be uncomfortable, expose a part of myself that I'd rather not. I have to reprioritize, reorganize, and rethink. Most importantly, I need to eat something and think about all the rest of this later.

When I find myself in this place, just trying to make it through X before I deal with my blood sugar, I try to rein it in with a firm reminder to myself. This will be easier when it's over. And it's usually true. 

This time last year...

Has become a common refrain in our household. "Remember when?" has popped up a lot as well, because as the weeks start ticking down towards my first dia-versary (spelling?), this time last year I was, well, sick.

It's fun, but also upsetting sometimes. We went down to visit the BF's parents, and we remembered a hike in the canyons that I could barely make it back up out of. I remember drinking all of my water within the first half hour; he had to ration the rest from me so we had some for the return. I remember the pure frustration of feeling so exhausted even from going downhill. I remember the peculiar sensation that my legs weren't holding me up--my legs felt as jelly-ish as if I'd just run a marathon (well actually for me as a non-runner more like as if I'd just run a 5K...) and my ankles jolted with each step. I remember tripping over each stray rock, my feet not lifting as high as I thought they would. I remember pure disbelief when our phones told us the hike had only been 4 miles. I remember napping in the car on the way home.

When we drove to get food, we remembered how I'd drunk the entire extra-large jamaica meant to be shared among his family. And how I'd gotten seconds (no one had ever thought to ask for a refill before!) and drunk most of that, too.

I remembered stumbling around their house each night, 2 or 3 times, restless and needing to pee.

It was after this trip that I went to the doctor for the first time, suspicious that something was wrong. Unfortunately, I have had ovarian cysts before, and so I blamed my symptoms on that (turns out ovarian cyst symptoms pretty much run the gamut and can explain away almost anything) after they found one on my ultrasound. That poor, benign cyst got the blame for everything, right up until they started pumping insulin through me in the emergency room.

But mostly what gets me about the "remember this" game is how much I don't remember, or how clouded my memories are. The spring of last year passed in a cloudy haze for me, and most of my memories are tied into exhaustion or centered around what sugary treat I was desperate for.

Sometimes when I want to refer to that time, I'll say, "Remember when I had diabetes and..." First of all, because "Remember when I had undiagnosed diabetes" is longer and therefore less fun to say. And second of all, because if I think of diabetes as a disease, and of a disease as feeling sick, then I have never felt so sick as those days.