January 30, 2003
north-north-west
My blood sugar this afternoon, four hours after lunch: 222.
Want to know what I ate?
Half a burrito.
I haven't been funny lately, for which I apologize. For the past two months now I've been de facto tech writer at work, a function I oozed into like oil in a Republican pocket. Tech writing, I've discovered, has been the enema of my creative functions; by the time I'm done at the end of the day, I've nothing left for personal expression, much less humor. Embarrassed though I am to admit it, I've taken some refuge in gaming the way I did in college when I first discovered the Internet. You know those cheeto-flavored, gelatinous geeks who used to scratch themselves in front of the computer and pretend to be knights in shining armor, bouncing on dragons to rescue the large-breasted beauty in distress?
Except for the cheeto-flavoring (which came later) and the scratching (which was solved with lotion -- Rochester was dry in the winter, that's all I'm saying --) and knight-in-shining-armor-ness, that was me. Gelatinous geek.
The Guy, who has lately been enamoured of a new surround sound stereo system he's set up for DVD player, complained this evening that he never sees me wearing anything but pajamas these days. In fact, I'm wearing them right now. Tweety bird in flannel, my spiritual sanctuary. If I wear them much longer, they'll be able to go to the bathroom by themselves.
The fact is, I've been tired of a lot of things lately. Tired of socializing. Not that I ever did much. Tired of work. Yeah, right, get over it. Tired of moving. Tired of watching my diet. Tired of checking my blood sugar. Tired of the little lancets and the little digital glucose meter I gushed over when I first saw it -- "Isn't it cute?" -- and tired of seeing the numbers on the face and realizing things aren't really going well in the health department.
The diabetes isn't under control. It's been almost three months. Am I impatient? Yes. But. It's only been three months. If I'm tired now, what'll happen in three years?
Spare me another night to feel bitter and down; they don't happen as often as they used to.
I used to check my blood sugar by sticking myself in the finger. It hurt, but I was too much the coward to try any other way. There are veins in my arms, ones that I can see, and even more that I can't. In Tahoe, Mom explained it to me, showed me the little place by the wrist bone just along that line where my watch lies. "It doesn't hurt at all there," she said.
She wasn't quite telling the truth. It does hurt there. It just doesn't hurt the same way.
I'm right-handed, but I wear my watch on my left, so it serves as cover-up. The Guy got me this watch, though I wasn't used to wearing it all that often. Now I wear it every day. When I take it off, you can see a little sprinkling of scabs, like minute freckles, tiny red dots where I've jabbed my skin to get blood for a glucose test. Twice a day. It makes me self-conscious so I wear my watch.
Sometimes there are too many freckles, and I can't find a spot anymore, no place that's not a little too tender, or a little too dotted. Then I switch to my right wrist, which is harder to do since my left hand is clumsy with the lancet. I jab, and I bleed, but never quite enough because I didn't do it right. So then I reload and jab and I bleed some more, until there are seven or eight little spots of blood welling up -- and still nothing adequate, not enough, and I've gone through a half-week's worth of test strips with nothing to show for it but ERR, ERR, on the digital meter. That means Error.
It's a complicated thing being sick, trying to control something that defies understanding -- well, my understanding anyway -- without submitting to rhyme or reason. My blood sugar should be under 150. It almost never is.
Why does my body like the salads at V----- when they're so much larger, so much cheesier, drowned in croutons and dressing and bacon bits? Why does it rebel at small green salads of half the size, sans dressing, sans taste, picked up from the deli in Mountain View? Why does exercising bring my blood sugar down, except the day before yesterday when it made it shoot up? Why do two identical menus eaten two consecutive days result one day in 142 and another day in 190?
And idiotically, I reject cakes and candies offered to me by coworkers, and feel as though someone should recognize the effort I'm making, as if it benefited someone other than myself. Isn't it enough to give something up just for me? Just so I'll have a better life, eight years down the line? But somehow it isn't. I need a starving baby in Tibet who'll get the treats I reject, someone worth the sacrifice.
Stupid. Except it kind of isn't.
In a joking moment I told a frustrated client -- a doctor in New York -- what I had. He was annoyed at the time with some small thing, an irritant in our software that set his brains to boiling.
"--and meanwhile," he was complaining at the top of his lungs, "I have a clinic full of diabetics with blood sugars of 270 wandering around, and you can't fix this for me? What're you doing over there?"
He was sort of joking, but not really. I was flustered. "Being one of your diabetics with a blood sugar of 270," I told him, which was true, but not really. (210. Was that close enough?)
He quieted down, puzzled, while I talked to some engineers. When I picked up the phone again, he demanded, "Are you serious?"
He's a good doctor. An excellent doctor. He barked at me over the phone, forgetting all about his software frustrations, and I felt immeasurably better; better than I had when I'd seen my own doctor, who'd seemed resentful I'd come down (can you 'come down'?) with diabetes.
"What are you taking?"
"Glucophage." Which I am, sort of. Except I'm really not, because though I have the pills I have no directions. 'Take once a day with food.' When? And daily? Who knows? I didn't tell him. He'd worry.
"That's a good drug," he said with approval.
A few days later he called with another problem. While I worked on it over the phone, he interrupted to ask: "What's your blood sugar?"
"Average? 170-ish."
"Too high. Get it down."
I felt like saluting.
Yesterday he called late at night, for something else. Again in mid-thought he interrupted me to ask: "What's your A1C?"
I paused. "My what?"
"A1C. Your A1C."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I confessed.
He exploded. "Christ." He's Jewish. "You don't know what your A1C is? Get another doctor. You need your A1C. It has to be under 7."
"That sounds familiar--" I said hesitantly.
"Under 7!" he yelled.
I went home that night and checked on my bulletin board, where my first lab test and diagnosis are pinned up with the rest of my crap, things that are keepsakes or reminders. As if I needed to remember that. There it was. A1C. And this morning he called again.
"Yuhri, about your A1C. I was thinking about it last night--"
I interrupted. Sometimes I'm the one to do it, instead of the other way around. "I found it on a lab slip. 8.3."
"Too high!" he barked. "Get it down! Under 8!"
The night before, he wanted it under 7. He was giving me a closer goal to reach. He bossed me from New York as though his sheer force of will would propel me down the slope of glucose highs. I grinned while I talked to him, hearing that same note in his voice he used for his patients, something different altogether from the one he used with his technical support. He would boss the entire world if he could cure their diseases.
A stupid little story, and somehow it still makes me smile. It's good to have faith in one doctor at least, even if he isn't yours. So now I'm in a good mood, and I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'll be funny, I swear. If the wind is southerly.