Diabetic Joys And Hell.

The hell of diabetes
Diabetes isn't all injections and no chocolate. It's a lot worse than that!

There are many “joys” and I use that word advisedly in being an insulin dependent diabetic. There’s the joy of injecting yourself with insulin, having to eat at certain times and having to severely ration sugar intake mainly by never or rarely eating chocolate, candy and calorific treats like donuts. Then there’s the fact that diabetes by its very nature makes losing weight almost impossible because you have to eat a certain amount of carbohydrates each meal and a salad just wont cut it. The worst thing of all (in my opinion) is the way my body and mind (possibly my soul too) react when I have a severe lack of glucose and/or carbohydrate in my body.

Normally diabetics get warning symptoms before a low blood sugar episode and these include a headache behind the eye, shaking, slurring words and being unable to think as the mind turns to cotton wool. After many years and almost three decades of having diabetes I no longer get the advance warning signs. This is dangerous for me as it leaves me no opportunity to stop an attack by quickly eating some glucose or sugar and I generally only know when I have had a low sugar episode after the event when everyone delights in telling me how I made a fool of myself. I never have any memory of these episodes and the time is just a blank never to be recovered which is frightening to be honest.

I had an episode this morning and the first I knew of it was when I was moaning and groaning and not in a good way in bed. I am drenched in a cold sweat and have no co-ordination. I cannot speak because I can’t move my tongue to form words, my legs and arms won’t move in the direction I want them to. I am as helpless as a new born baby. I’m always freezing cold when I come out of an episode and to say I feel bad is the biggest understatement ever. If you can imagine being tortured for ten years non stop then getting the flu and then running a full marathon while headbutting a concrete wall you will only be imagining half of how bad I feel. See what I mean about joy?

Usually an amulance has been called to get me back to the land of the living and the ambulance men have injected me with liquid glucose. Yet another injection to add to the four insulin injections I have to take daily.

When in the middle of an episode, diabetics can get violent, well until the co-ordination goes they can and I have done this on a couple of occasions. I’ve kicked an emergency room doctor in the nether region and even punched my own mother in the face. This is never done on purpose and once back to normal I am ashamed and embarassed by it. I hate myself for having done that even though I know it wasn’t done on purpose in any way. It’s so much easier to forgive others than it is to forgive yourself. Have you ever noticed that?

One time when I was living on my own and around twenty years old this episode happened to me. It took me three hours to crawl to the lounge and get to the telephone. I crawled along the carpet mainly by dragging myself along the carpet when co-ordination would let me. This crawling was made more difficult by my kitten who had decided the best thing to do was dig her sharp claws into my shoulder and cling on for dear life.
Hours later I finally manage to dial emergency and manage to moan incoherently down the phone to the operater who stayed on the phone trying to find out about me like had I been shot or stabbed? while both the police and ambulance men got to me.

The police arrived first and had to body slam the front door to get in where they found a twenty year old me, completely stark naked and covered in carpet burns (through dragging myself over the carpet). Did I mention the fact I was also covered in vomit and had wet myself.
Mmmmm not a vision of lovelyness.
The policemen who were both twenty-one at the most covered me up with one of their coats till the ambulance men arrived and properly brought me back to the land of the living.

Add to these "joys and fun experiences" is the fact that a badly controlled diabetic can end up with having feet amputated, slipping into a coma, blindness and suffer liver and kidney failure. A pregnant diabetic usually has a larger baby than non diabetics, and that just about sums up my luck.

So there you have it the joys of diabetes. Bet you’re glad you don’t have it lol.