The Joy of Diabetes

My friend Chris found this incredible website. This guy, Bob Hawkinson, has been diabetic for 44 years (since he was a year old), and he’s written some sort of humorous book about it. The website has an excerpt and the introduction to the book, so you can check that out, too.

It seems like he’s dealt with this disease for so long, and he’s encouraging other diabetics to accept their disease and enjoy life while taking charge of their health. Sounds great, right? Yep. I’ll probably buy this book pretty soon.

Also cool? There’s a store on the website! T-shirts, magnets, keychains.

My favorite:

I always enjoy a good diabetic joke, as you know. I love it when I see other diabetics who can also accept their condition enough to joke around about it, while also being serious about taking care of themselves. This guy seems to have that right balance, and I look forward to reading this book. I’ll post again when I finally get a copy!

Coincidence?

Last semester, my human growth & development professor always talked about being diabetic (type 2) and frequently complained about how he could never eat cake. Join the club, buddy…at least you don’t have to shoot up everyday.

Last night, before class started, my classmates and I were standing around talking with my educational psychology professor about diets. It turns out Dr. Breard was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, as well, and is able to control her diabetes just through dieting.

What have I learned from these experiences? Become a psychology professor, get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes!

(Okay, that’s a completely illogical fallacy, but an amusing coincidence, don’t you think? At least it gave me something to blog about. You’re welcome.)

Dreams last for so long.

Over the last several months (since maybe last summer or so), I’ve noticed an increase in particularly vivid dreams. Ridiculous things, sometimes even dark dreams. (Two recent ones: one about vampires and another about zombies, in particular. Both packed with detail and dark and scary.)

So when I found this headline on Yahoo news, I clicked on it, just to see what it said. I expected the usual psychoanalysis explanation, but instead, I found something interesting and totally relevant:

You Should See Your Doctor If …
You notice symptoms of bipolar disorder or diabetes, since both of these conditions may cause vivid dreaming. Both interrupt REM sleep and therefore affect the body’s ability to separate dreams from waking perceptions.

What? Diabetes can cause vivid dreams? Granted, I’ve been diabetic for over a year now, and I didn’t notice the increasing frequency of crazy dreams until last fall. But then again, I’m also oblivious, and perhaps I just never noticed. Highly likely.

Anyway, I kept reading and found more info:

Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, is another cause of vivid dreams. When the brain senses that glucose levels are low, it will do strange things to get stored glucose into the blood stream. One way it does so is through adrenaline spurts. If your vivid dreams are accompanied by a feeling of being “wired” (if, like me, you find yourself doing ninja kicks around your bedroom at those pesky alien invaders), it likely stems from a blood sugar issue.

I’ll have to start paying attention now, to see if the nights when I wake up from vivid dreams are also nights when my blood sugar is low.

Really, really fascinating. Who knew?

Happy Anniversary!

Three hundred and sixty-six days ago, I had no concept of what today would feel like. I was the sickest I’d ever been in my life, and I was horrified when the first words that the nurse at my doctor’s office asked were “How long have you been diabetic?” Suddenly, 2008 looked like an endurance race that I was sure to fail miserably at.

Who would have ever believed that becoming diabetic would be this good? I mean, my first thought certainly wasn’t “This could be one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me!” But strangely enough, it’s worked out that way.

One year later, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. I’ve shed 70 pounds, my diabetes is under control for the most part, and I’ve proven to myself that being diabetic doesn’t mean my life is over, or even limited in any major way. So I carry around syringes and make jokes about being a druggie, and I take my coffee with Splenda now. Minor inconveniences, for the most part.

I’m honestly thankful for being diabetic. I never imagined that life could be this good as a diabetic. But I’ve learned a lot in the past year. I’ve grown up a lot, and I’ve realized that God can use even a broken pancreas to teach me how to rely on Him.

So, a tribute to my busted pancreas: we did it! May we have many, many more happy, healthy years ahead of us!

Today’s List of Awesome Things.

1. I was at Wal-Mart on my lunch break, and on a whim, I headed down the Christmas candy aisle. To my delight, I discovered gift boxes of sugar-free chocolate and boxes of sugar-free candy canes! (Note: I’m in no way implying that you should buy them for me, but since my mom likes to put candy in our stockings, I actually have a viable option!) Now, if only M&Ms could be sugar-free. I regretfully admired the winter mix package, filled with M&Ms in shades of blue and white. Beautiful and tasty, I’m sure. I think I shall start a letter-writing campaign, complaining about their obvious discrimination against those of us who must be artificially sweetened.

2. Even more awesome that sugar-free candy? I just ordered a new Threadless shirt this morning. It’s the most amazing one I’ve seen in a a long time:

May God truly bless whoever designed this fantastic t-shirt.

Instability.

I’m going to bed soon, and when I set my alarm to wake up in the morning, I also set another for 2:30 a.m. That’s because I could probably count on one hand the number of nights in the past month that I haven’t woken up very early in the morning with low blood sugar.

My doctor has adjusted my insulin every week for the past three weeks in an effort to prevent this, but to no avail so far. Occassionally, there are even days when I eat normally and my blood sugar drops before lunch or dinner, which never happened until recently. In fact, yesterday evening, before I ate dinner, my blood sugar registered at 47. I had only started to feel the physical effects of it a few minutes before. And this morning, when I woke up at 3 a.m., my meter read 35…a new record low. Scary, and the reason I’m going to start waking myself up as a preventative measure. Hopefully, that will work.

I would love to petition my body to just be a little more dependable. I would love a pancreas upgrade. I would love to be able to go to sleep right now and not have to worry that my blood sugar will have dropped 300 points when I check it in a few hours. I would love to not inadvertently invoke guilt when a friend offers me a candy cane.

It’s been close to a year now that I’ve been diabetic. Ten and a half months ago, I had no concept of what this day would look like. It’s better than I ever imagined, but it still isn’t easy, especially these last few weeks because having low blood sugar levels makes me feel really out of it. It’s pretty exhausting, actually.

It’s a good reassurance to know that this is essentially temporary. When I get to heaven, and I’m partying with Jesus, my pancreas will work just fine. When I get there, I hope He pulls out a box of strawberry jelly-filled, powdered sugar donuts and iced coffee sweetened with real sugar, and hands them over. I hope we have a picnic with Mama Kat’s pound cake and pecan pie as the main course. And I hope we finish it off with strawberry cheesecake and sweet tea. What a day of rejoicing that will be…a sweet life indeed.

Disney and Diabetes?

Evidently, The Disney Channel has (fortunately) decided to pull the season premier of Hannah Montana, after parents expressed concern over the content. Apparently, one of Hannah’s friends is diabetic, and the show (entitled “No Sugar, Sugar”) is about his dealing with the disease. You can find the article about the episode here.

While part of me is pleased that Disney is making some sort of attempt to educate children, I’m reasonably sure this is not the best method. I’ve seen Hannah Montana. I’ve not been impressed. The show is silly and insipid, and I think diabetes is too complicated and too much of an issue for them to handle properly, while conveying factual, necessary information to young children.

Just stick with the Jonas Brothers, Disney. Every pre-teen girl in America wants to find a cure for diabetes and save Nick Jonas. You don’t need to bring Hannah Montana into the picture, too.

Kiss Diabetes Goodbye

November is American Diabetes Month. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is currently doing a campaign called “Kiss Diabetes Goodbye.” They’re attempting to raise $1 million in the month of November as part of the campaign.

Another aspect of the campaign involves signing a petition to President-Elect Barack Obama:

Dear Mr. President:

One in three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. With this diagnosis brings an increased risk of heart disease, nerve damage, blindness, amputations and death.

Nearly 24 million people have this disease which costs our country $174 billion dollars per year. This will lead to one of the biggest economic crisis of our time if steps are not taken to stop this epidemic.

As you begin your administration, I am asking you to help:

• reduce burden of diabetes and other chronic diseases in America;
• provide accessible, adequate and affordable health care coverage for all;
• improve the quality of health care for people with diabetes; and
• ensure all individuals are treated equally and fairly by the health system.

This is the only way to change the future of diabetes in our country.

To sign the petition, you can click here. It only takes a few seconds, so you should all go do that. Right now.

Jesus loves me, this I know.

Today, I had an hour and a half lunch break, which is always nice if I have to run errands. I needed to go to the bank (at Cherrydale), so I took my time, enjoyed (immensely!) my drive down Hwy. 25 (the leaves are incredible!). After I went to the bank, I stopped back by Wal-Mart, where I first bought the new Switchfoot album “The Best Yet.” (Spectacular!)

Basically, all that to say that the day was just really GOOD to start off with. But as I was walking through Wal-Mart, grinning like a silly person while clutching my new CD/DVD combo, I realized my blood sugar was low. I’d been a little shaky earlier this morning, so I wasn’t surprised. So I headed to Subway for my customary salad and potato chips.

But today was also Free Cookie Day, which I totally took advantage of. And when I checked my blood sugar, after eating lunch, it was only 66. So I ate the entire cookie. Chocolate chip. My first real cookie this year. And it was divine. I have never tasted something so delicious, I’m pretty sure. I also believe it was preordained that I should get low blood sugar on Free Cookie Day.

And that is the story of how I know Jesus loves me, and how a chocolate chip cookie saved my life.

Join the crowd.

I’m a news junkie, and I recieve CNN news alerts in my inbox each day. This morning, I opened the email to the news article about South Carolina, expecting to see yet another political article about early voting in the state. Instead, the headline was actually extremely relevent to my life: “U.S. Diabetes Rate Nearly Doubles in a Decade.”

I knew diabetes is the fastest growing disease in American right now, but doubled in only ten years? That’s much more than I expected. And that’s also a statistic that I contributed to.

Not surprisingly, the highest levels of growth have been in the South. West Virginia actually has the most new cases. Thirteen people in every 1,000 were diagnosed with diabetes in the last decade. That’s astonishing.

Ironically, this news came out today, on Halloween, which is probably the day when Americans consume more sugar than any other day of the year. Incidentally, today is also the ten-month anniversary of my diagnosis.

Maybe I should buy sugar-free candy and pass it out to trick-or-treaters tonight. Or better yet, I’ll hand out a supply of insulin syringes. That way, when the epidemic continues, and half those children are diagnosed with diabetes, they’ll be ready for it.