Diabetes is a Bitch

Chronic diseases like diabetes mess with your mind and play havoc with your emotions.

Diabetes is a bitch. That’s the honest truth. No one ever tells you that straight up. But I’m here to tell you.

Ten years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. I didn’t handle it well. I went into complete denial. I found out about a year after my first son was born. I was preparing for nasal polyp surgery by taking an oral steroid called prednisone. Steroids can drive up blood sugar. But I didn’t know that at the time.

The first sign of trouble was an unquenchable thirst. I was chugging water all day, peeing it all out, and then chugging more. I couldn’t get enough. Then my vision went blurry. I remember driving to pick up my son. The road was blurry, the traffic lights were blurry, and all the cars were blurry. Everything. I was driving so slow because I was scared. People were honking at me.

The next morning I went to the doctor. They checked my blood sugar. Normal blood sugar ranges from 80 to 140, depending on if you’ve eaten or not. For pre-diabetes, the range is 100 to 200. Full-blown diabetes is 125 to over 200. Mine was 500! That’s very bad. The next thing I knew some woman was showing me how to stab myself with a needle and inject insulin.

“You’re diabetic,” the doctor said. And that was it. Good luck with that. And the doctor sent me out the door, stunned and bewildered.

Diabetic? Really? I was only 40 years old and in good health. I wasn’t overweight. I weighted a measly 150 lbs. What was going on here?

In the ensuing days, I totally rationalized it. I learned a side effect of prednisone was a spike in blood sugar. Oh, so that’s what happened. I didn’t have diabetes. My blood sugar shooting through the roof was a total fluke. No underlying condition. I didn’t need to inject myself with insulin. I didn’t need to jab my finger ten times a day to make it bleed so I could check my sugars. I just had to take this little metformin pill because that’s easier.

And that kind of denial seemed to work for a while. But unbeknownst to me I had a festering autoimmune disease that was only getting worse and beating the hell out of my pancreas until it was dead.

Related posts:

Recently I participated in a discussion about wearable and wellness data with the coaches and managers of a top-level sports team. We talked about how they could better utilize wearable data in their…

The mobile advertising market refers to the industry that focuses on delivering advertisements to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. With the rapid growth of mobile devices usage…

As a new content designer, I had a manager (now mentor) who introduced me to Behavioral Science in the context of product design. She did it because she noticed a pattern. I believed (and designed)…