reconciliation

I spent some time talking about my diabetics with an old friend (an RN) who consoled me with the thought "you're going on injected drugs sooner or later". She told me that modern equipment (syringes) have gotten so good that I'd hardly notice injecting myself. Well, I had started to think so already. She said she hardly feels the material going in.

I grossed her out when I said that when I am checking my blood sugar level,  I often stick the needle in and twist it around. This is to get a bigger hole in my arm and thus, a better blood bead. The problem is that once I take the blood drop into the meter, I have a nice sized hole in my arm that is slow to close up and I end up using a piece of Kleenex or a band aid.

Oh, well, I'll get used to it.

For a long time, I thought that going onto insulin was the last step before losing limbs and dying of heart failure (it was for my Father and youngest Brother, wasn't it?). It was the final step into the abyss and that step into damnation. My MD told me I was being silly and my wife said I was being a drama queen.  Of course, this simplistic attitude ignores:

• my Father smoked 2-3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day - Chesterfields - for 35 years (his admission) and may have drank too much. I don't and have never, smoked. I don't drink much because I am alergic to red wine and nearly all distill liquors and don't like most beers. Also, I simply lost interest in getting drunk after New Year's Eve 1999. It was that last hangover on 1 January 2000 that "did me in"...
• my youngest Brother (Charles Andrew Bell) smoked, snorted coke and didn't take care of his self (i.e. ate badly - pizza and Croak-ah Coke Cola -, didn't exercise and didn't properly check his blood sugar (when you see a person's blood sugar check kit in his trunk and you know he didn't put it there after dinner, you know he hasn't been using it lately!)
• many folks take the injected drugs and do just fine (I work with a woman who has been taking a couple of injected drugs daily for years and she is doing fine.)

I will do fine when I eventually go on the needle. It won't be a death sentence; it might be a "life" sentence. Injected drugs are simply another way of getting drugs into a person.

It has only in the past couple of years sunk into me that when comparing type 1 and type 2, I needed to put emphasis on the "diabetic" part of "diabetic type 2". It has always been about being "diabetic" and not if I am being treated with syringe or pill. It was a real shock to learn that type 2s take insulin also.

I'll have to remember to start carrying my list of meds around with me and to show it to  Anna D. (the nurse I talked with) at the next Lions Convention.