Blind, Deaf, and Legless
Today was a bad day. I suppose I enjoyed knitting and watching 2 movies and many shows on my DVR (GLEE!), but today was a bad day emotionally.
Every morning I wake up around 7:30 and have breakfast. Banana nut cheerios. I love them. I hate starting my morning without them. But every day for about the last week my blood sugar crashes at 11am. Crashes to the point where I'm shaking and wobbly and can't think straight. So I have an early binge lunch. Every time it happens it scares me. But I have been logical. After the first two times it happened I changed my insulin - gave myself less with my breakfast, but my blood sugar still plummeted. So I gave myself no insulin the next day. And crash again. I decided I had gone the wrong direction. I gave myself a normal amount yesterday and a little extra today. Crash and Crash. So in my head I am panicking that my diabetes is out of control and I'll never be able to fix it (see the scientific way I went about trying to fix it already!), and I will go blind and lose my legs. I'm blind and legless.
I go to the phone to frantically try to get ahold of my dad because he can always calm me down and tell me how to fix my problems. After an hour of trying, I call my brother. He is brilliant, but I think I interrupted his studying, which can confuse him. And he came up with these gems. First he was confused when I told him I am going to end up blind and legless. I yell, "DARIN! I'm going to go BLIND! And lose my LEGS!!! I won't be able to watch movies, or knit any new patterns. I'll have to keep knitting the patterns I have memorized over and over. And I won't be able to dance. How can I dance if I have no legs?" And he goes, "Well, can you see right now?" I'm being melodramatic here. I'm afraid that somewhere in the future I will go blind and lose my legs, and he asks me if I can still see. YES.
And then my sweet, wonderful brother says, "Carla, you're probably going to go deaf from antibiotics before you go blind or your legs fall off." OH GOOD. Now I'm Blind, DEAF, and Legless. I can't even listen to music anymore - or talk to any one! Oh My God! I'm going to be stuck with my own thoughts for the rest of my life. THAT'S THE SCARRIEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED!!!
Wait, back up. My brother thinks that when my diabetes continues to be out of control my legs will just FALL OFF? Hilarious. I had to remind him that a diabetic loses sensations in the legs - neuropathy - and then usually they get infected and have to be amputated. They just don't FALL OFF. But it's funny to think that some day I could be dancing and my leg just falls off. So I hop on the remaining leg until it falls off, and then I either find myself a wheel chair, or just lie on the floor and wiggle around to get places. Which might be hard if I'm also blind and deaf...
I can see myself on the floor with my hands above my head wiggling, trying to get somewhere, not even sure where I am to begin with. But I keep wiggling. Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle. Imagine it. It's the thing that's made me smile the most today!
The other option my brother gave me - after reminding me that they can fix the hearing problem with cochlear implants, the vision with transplant of some sort of micro chip, and if my legs fall off I can get those cool legs for running. Then I can run really really fast - after I have a lung transplant. My brother said, "Well if they're going to do that, they should just take your brain and put it in a robot!"
And I said, "JUST LIKE DARTH VADER!!!" And I proceeded to breathe heavily into the phone, demonstrating what an awesome candidate for a full-body life support system I am. And I'd get a cool cape, too. And I could be a SKINNY robot. Well, a well-proportioned robot - the size I used to be before I gained all this crappy weight.
Which brings me to one of the reasons I'm so depressed. I hate this extra weight. And I'm sad about my mom. And sad about high school. And sad about the time I lost the school science fair in 4th grade. I did my project on inhaled DNase. I was in the clinical trial and therefore my science project was very boring compared to the kid who taped two soda bottles together and made a tornado.
I was excited to find out that ALL FOUR of my podcasts are up on CFvoice.com - too bad I can't listen to NUMBER 2 because I have to LOGIN - and they change my password on me. I can't choose my own password to the site, because it's a pretty lame site. I can't listen to the podcast I recorded. It's ME. MY PODCAST. And I can't listen to it because I don't know my own password. Of all the ways to end my day - listening to myself be the worst story teller in the world is humorous, but I can't figure out how to listen to the one where I talk about my parents until tomorrow. I better hurry, though, because I have no idea how long it's going to be before I'm Blind, Deaf, and Legless.
Every morning I wake up around 7:30 and have breakfast. Banana nut cheerios. I love them. I hate starting my morning without them. But every day for about the last week my blood sugar crashes at 11am. Crashes to the point where I'm shaking and wobbly and can't think straight. So I have an early binge lunch. Every time it happens it scares me. But I have been logical. After the first two times it happened I changed my insulin - gave myself less with my breakfast, but my blood sugar still plummeted. So I gave myself no insulin the next day. And crash again. I decided I had gone the wrong direction. I gave myself a normal amount yesterday and a little extra today. Crash and Crash. So in my head I am panicking that my diabetes is out of control and I'll never be able to fix it (see the scientific way I went about trying to fix it already!), and I will go blind and lose my legs. I'm blind and legless.
I go to the phone to frantically try to get ahold of my dad because he can always calm me down and tell me how to fix my problems. After an hour of trying, I call my brother. He is brilliant, but I think I interrupted his studying, which can confuse him. And he came up with these gems. First he was confused when I told him I am going to end up blind and legless. I yell, "DARIN! I'm going to go BLIND! And lose my LEGS!!! I won't be able to watch movies, or knit any new patterns. I'll have to keep knitting the patterns I have memorized over and over. And I won't be able to dance. How can I dance if I have no legs?" And he goes, "Well, can you see right now?" I'm being melodramatic here. I'm afraid that somewhere in the future I will go blind and lose my legs, and he asks me if I can still see. YES.
And then my sweet, wonderful brother says, "Carla, you're probably going to go deaf from antibiotics before you go blind or your legs fall off." OH GOOD. Now I'm Blind, DEAF, and Legless. I can't even listen to music anymore - or talk to any one! Oh My God! I'm going to be stuck with my own thoughts for the rest of my life. THAT'S THE SCARRIEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED!!!
Wait, back up. My brother thinks that when my diabetes continues to be out of control my legs will just FALL OFF? Hilarious. I had to remind him that a diabetic loses sensations in the legs - neuropathy - and then usually they get infected and have to be amputated. They just don't FALL OFF. But it's funny to think that some day I could be dancing and my leg just falls off. So I hop on the remaining leg until it falls off, and then I either find myself a wheel chair, or just lie on the floor and wiggle around to get places. Which might be hard if I'm also blind and deaf...
I can see myself on the floor with my hands above my head wiggling, trying to get somewhere, not even sure where I am to begin with. But I keep wiggling. Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle. Imagine it. It's the thing that's made me smile the most today!
The other option my brother gave me - after reminding me that they can fix the hearing problem with cochlear implants, the vision with transplant of some sort of micro chip, and if my legs fall off I can get those cool legs for running. Then I can run really really fast - after I have a lung transplant. My brother said, "Well if they're going to do that, they should just take your brain and put it in a robot!"
And I said, "JUST LIKE DARTH VADER!!!" And I proceeded to breathe heavily into the phone, demonstrating what an awesome candidate for a full-body life support system I am. And I'd get a cool cape, too. And I could be a SKINNY robot. Well, a well-proportioned robot - the size I used to be before I gained all this crappy weight.
Which brings me to one of the reasons I'm so depressed. I hate this extra weight. And I'm sad about my mom. And sad about high school. And sad about the time I lost the school science fair in 4th grade. I did my project on inhaled DNase. I was in the clinical trial and therefore my science project was very boring compared to the kid who taped two soda bottles together and made a tornado.
I was excited to find out that ALL FOUR of my podcasts are up on CFvoice.com - too bad I can't listen to NUMBER 2 because I have to LOGIN - and they change my password on me. I can't choose my own password to the site, because it's a pretty lame site. I can't listen to the podcast I recorded. It's ME. MY PODCAST. And I can't listen to it because I don't know my own password. Of all the ways to end my day - listening to myself be the worst story teller in the world is humorous, but I can't figure out how to listen to the one where I talk about my parents until tomorrow. I better hurry, though, because I have no idea how long it's going to be before I'm Blind, Deaf, and Legless.
Comments
I give myself 10 units of lantus at bedtime everynight and then humalog with meals if needed (unless I am sick and on prednisone all I usually need is the lantus.)