"If you eat sugar you will die": Diabetes Diagnosis Story

 I was 10 when I became diabetic.  It was (and was not) an out-of-the-blue kind of thing.  There is no history of Type I Diabetes in our family. None.  We had no knowledge of the symptoms, did not know how to recognize it. The best we can think is that a virus sent my islet cells on permanent vacation (I hope they are reveling in somewhere warm, tropical...and hurricane free). 

I had a nasty virus in the fall, one that knocked me and other family members over.  

And in February, I really did not feel well for a quick space.  I remember touring the Vicksburg Civil War Battlefield on our way to Florida in February, feeling wobbly and nauseous.  I became fraught at the sight of mayonnaise, so potently revolting.  At some point, I wet my pants in the backseat of the van....despite having just used the restroom.  I remained off kilter during our stay on Gasparilla Island, but felt well enough to read a Joy Fielding novel that came with our rental unit. Years later I reread and found that  the book was not actually, remotely, what my 10-year-old self had thought. 

At school, I leaned against the brick building during recess and watched the kids play.  They all seemed to have energy that I did not. 

We were visiting family in Minnesota when it became abundantly clear that something was wrong.  Now--in my heart I had known something was wrong.  Surely.  And I had read Ann M. Martin's The Baby-Sitter's Club, one of the first and only book series to realistically represent diabetes.  I knew Stacy's symptoms. They were the same as my own.  But saying something would have made it real.  

So, after the doctor's office and the number on the brick of a blood-glucose meter--maybe it was 365?  410?  Definitely not the 80-120 one wants--and after the E.R. Admission, and getting settled into the degrading-at-any-age hospital gown and hooked up to the I.V....I had some inkling of what to expect, thanks to the fictional Stacy and her own diabetes story.

But there's only so much a 10-year old can reasonably process or assimilate into a framework.  

"If you eat sugar you will die" and other stark phrases are things that are not processable or assimilate-able.  I heard this phrase from one of my two nurses.  They were both lovely, warm, and caring.  And clearly, in retrospect, misinformed.  

"If you eat sugar you will die" was one of the many stark pronouncements I and my parents heard in the days I was in the hospital.  During Easter, I might add.

All of these pronouncements predicted gloom, doom, and death.  Even one high blood sugar could kill me.  Eating sugar would kill me.  Eating sugar and the resulting high blood sugars first--before they killed me--would destroy my kidneys, make my limbs decay until they had to be amputated, and cause blindness.

Yes, each of these are potential consequences of poor blood sugar control.  But boy, do they overstate the case and understate the nuances of attempting (just attempting) to live a physically and emotionally healthy life as a diabetic. 

What this meant, for me, as a 10-year old, was that even in the hospital I was afraid to eat.  I nearly passed out from a low blood sugar, right in front of the nurse.  For a while, every high blood sugar caused panic.  

These responses did not last.  

What did last was fear for my eyes.  

In the early years of eye doctors appointments, I held my breath as the doctor scanned my eyes, praying "Please don't let me have complications, please don't let me have complications."  By the time I was 25 or 26, I'd let that go.  I'd still get nervous--but I had a good track record. 

Until a few years ago, when the eye doctor paused to say there were tiny, very tiny beginnings of retinopathy in one eye.  

My eyes welled up.  I started to cry.  He was stunned.  He did not know the residue of the fear mongering from....20 years before.  He reassured me that the evidence was minuscule, and likely reversable.  He was right.  The spot has since disappeared.  And reappeared. And disappeared again.  

Bell's Palsy has added a new layer...maybe not of fear, but of vigilance.  My right eye doesn't close.  It gets dry.  I tape it shut at night to keep it from drying out and scratching my cornea.  Wind and the potential for debris blowing around and in means I am very careful. It means no more convertible rides with the hood down, much to my heartbreak.  

I only have two eyes, and I am doing everything I can to protect them.  

But I am still eating sugar. By which I mean food.  And sometimes chocolate.

Because if you eat sugar you will not die.  

So there.  And take that.