Diary of a Diabetic

119. 138. 146. 152.

I am obsessed with weight. I am obsessed with food.

Turkey with gravy, Dairy Queen blizzards, Pepsi, pickle and cheese sandwiches, apple pie, pastrami with mustard, soup, White Spot breakfast, Eggo waffles, butter, milk, juice, bacon, lard, fat, cottage cheese, cellulite, gross.

I wake up. It is 2:46 am. I have to pee for the 10^th time tonight. You think I am exaggerating but I’m not. I have been up and down 9 other times, urinating out all of the nutrients that keep me alive. If I just keep my blood sugars down for another two weeks I will be at my goal weight of 115. I have peed 9 times in the last three hours since I went to bed.

I wake up again and for the final time before I get sleep, I pee. My body is exhausted from only getting four hours of sleep. I am groggy all day at work…affecting everything I do, every exchange I have with a person. I am grumpy. Lack of sleep plus high blood sugar is a lethal combination for this woman. I check my blood sugar. I am 42.8. The average is 3.0-6.0. I am slowly killing myself. My liver feels like a dull throb every time I consume liquid or food. My kidneys are aching. My head hurts, migraine style, I cant focus at work. The letters on the screen are blurry. I fall asleep on my lunch break. I am now a size four. GOAL. I’m so sick.

One morning I manage to drive myself to work. You can smell the key tones on my body. I reek of sweet plum smell. I am no longer registering on my glucometer. This means my blood sugar is over 50.0. I should be in a coma right now. I fight with my boss, telling her I can drive myself to the hospital. I can barely stand. I drive to ARH. I tell them I need help asap and I am admitted within minutes and I’m hooked up to the drip. I have a kidney infection, a urinary tract infection and I have zero potassium in my body. I am severely dehydrated. One more week of this and I would have died. All to loose a pound…or twenty.

The funny thing about diabetes is that you need to evenly control your intake of food with your levels of insulin. Make your blood sugar go high and you miraculously loose weight. Make your blood sugars low and you put on weight trying to eat your way out of hypoglycemia. Diabetes is a fine line walked every day by millions of people.

So why do I feel like I am the only one.

Fast forward four months. I am a size 8. I am the heaviest I have ever weighed in at, a whopping 152. I am swelling. I have edema. This is where the body after being severely dehydrated, retains all the water that I consume. My stomach is large with water weight. My diabetic friend in the UK says it goes away within months. Here’s hoping. I feel stronger, I have more energy. I can stay awake at work. I can lift a box without feeling that my arms are going to fall off. I also can’t fit into my size four pants. Its depressing.

I count my carbs. I meal exchange a sandwich for a bowl of soup…because it is cold today and I need something warm. I can’t eat the banana upside down cake. I crave cake. I always hated cake, and then I loved it. Now I can’t have it. My husband can eat the pie I made, even with exchanges it will still put my blood sugar over 20.0 . I feel that I am missing out on life sometimes. I hate having to excuse myself every time we go out to eat so that I can inject. I pray daily for this to be taken away from me.

I heard a sermon on Sunday that reminded me that even in the thick of life when you are at your worst, that God is still bigger than your biggest problem. And I have to have nothing but hope.

Hope that I am not diabetic in “vain”; that somewhere along the line I will be able to help someone who also has diabetes. That in each carb I count, each pound I loose or gain, each drop of insulin I take, will be done with a thankful heart for the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, for he disciplines and coaches us through the struggles he allows, with a greater purpose that you or I could ever know.