The Beat of an Insistent Drum

Ugh. Fine, you insistent timer. You win. This time.

It’s not like I have much choice, if I want to live. I mean that quite literally.

Even in my life-gumbo of diseases, complications, and side effects, apparently I have to be that special little snowflake. Normal? Moi? Have you met me? Have you read my stories?

If I’m lucky, I wake up starving. If I’m unlucky, I wake up screaming from a bad nightmare. If I’m very, very, unlucky, I wake up with a food aversion that plays footsies with nausea.

Such is the life of a Type 2 Diabetic, who has the side order of trending towards hypoglycemic - I run low, not high, when it comes to blood sugar. The longer I sleep in, the lower my blood sugar levels drop. If I get to the food aversion stage, I’m dangerously low, and need food immediately. The longer I push it, the easier it is to slip into diabetic coma, and die.

Ain’t I a lucky one? (curses in medicalese)

My husband has gotten pretty decent about hustling to get me breakfast in bed. It’s a necessity, if he wants to sleep in. On the mornings when he forgets, or the mornings when he thinks I’m fine (when, in fact, I am far from fine), he’s come to wake me – and I can’t move.

From experience, I can tell you that the edges of a diabetic coma are scary. Your brain is wide awake, but you can’t respond. Nothing like being trapped in a body, and you can’t even scream.

In the past, we’ve lived our lives with spontaneity. Oh, we have a day off? Let’s travel somewhere! Eh, I’m busy trimming trees in the garden, I’ll wait an hour or two to eat. And while we’re at it, I don’t feel like cooking, let’s order in…

Sigh.

It’s hard getting a stack of diseases that have killed off most of my family at the age of 65.

It’s even harder living beyond that lifespan. I was given two days to live when I was admitted to the hospital. They told my mom, not me, of course. Not cool, hospital staff, there’s a reason I have my own directives typed up and ready to go in an emergency. This is to show that they didn’t believe I’d follow the dietary and lifestyle restrictions once I left the hospital, and expected me to die within months.

In my drug-addled state (they put me on freaking-way-too-high dosages of all the meds), I said I had to live for my granddaughter. In truth, that’s just the first thing that popped to the surface of the gumbo-brain, seasoned heavily with Lisinipril, Metformin, and Metoprolol. Mmm-mmm!

Sorry, husband, parents, and grandpuppers, among others, I guess you were hiding in the brain gumbo? Moving on...

Getting myself out of the hole took time, and it took stages. Like grief, you move forward into a new chapter of living, try it on for a while, adjust, move on.

Lifestyle changes helped, of course. Learning to cook, changing to fresher ingredients to avoid salt, raising butterflies, trying to get on a regular eating schedule.

Then, COVID, and my husband losing two jobs in a row. Not to mention the political shit, I mean, shift…

Depression didn’t creep in, it did a cannonball in my life’s pool. There were days I didn’t move from my chair. So many of my friends and fam dead, it was overwhelming. No exercise, and about ten hours between bathroom breaks. Dehydrated much?

The answer was quite literally at my fingertips, though it took me a while to even admit it.

Stupid cell phone…

Me, who thrived on spontaneity, now had the tables turned. I live by those blasted alarms. And timers.

Ah, dear sweet Deity, the timers…

Breakfast? As soon as we’re abluted, and downstairs. Sometime between seven-thirty ack emma and eight fifteen. If I stick to that schedule, I don’t wake up hangry, or with a headache (also a sure sign of blood sugar drop), or screaming out of nightmares.

Lunch is at noon straight up, since I now get up at 6:45 ack blarghle. Because hubster does, since he’s now got an awesome job. It used to be 1:00pm, but that’s too long now. I would have a blood sugar drop around 10:00am, and then I’d start craving chocolate…

Snack is 3:30pm, and it involves a banana. If it doesn’t, my legs cramp up something fierce. We even have our granddaughter eating bananas instead of ice cream! She hears that particular sound, and she knows it’s banana time! We do a little dance to the tune coming from the phone.

Dinner is 6:00pm, and Midnight snack is 9:50pm. The latter used to be hummus with no-salt corn chips, but a handful of cashews works even better. Besides, with no inspectors, the salt per bite was increasing (and not disclosed on the packaging), and bringing back my congestive heart failure. I could feel my feet swelling up. No thanks.

And in between, The Timers.

Every 1.5 hours, the drums sound off, and I get off my duff, and walk back and forth in the house. At least four reps, no excuses, no delays.

Do I like it? Not a freaking bit.

But it’s either that, or die. Even when my joints ache because the weather changed, or I overdid it the day before, or my sciatica flares up.

And slowly, it’s working.

Much less swelling. Better stamina, so I can somewhat keep up with a very active grandchild – she did have her banana, after all.

I still have depressive mood swings, and they’re still tied to blood sugar and weather shifts, but they’re slowly improving. Slowly.

In two weeks, we’ll find out just how much improvement is really happening, when I have my half-year checkup, and we stare as that A1C number.

For the longest time, I didn’t see any improvement. Many times, I almost gave up.

Now, some days, I don’t even need the drumming reminder. My feet get a bit of a tingle, reminding me to get up and move my tushie. And I feel better, with better blood flow, and can return to whatever I was writing. It’s not like I can have caffeine anymore, to help keep the juices flowing.

I’ve had to give up a lot. I’m not the same person I was. Are any of us, after the last ten years or so?

I won’t say I’m better than I was, because of course I long for the days when I didn’t have to care when I ate, or when, or worry about getting enough exercise to carry me through haring off on another adventure. But when the drum calls, I must dance to its tune, even though some days it’s at hobbling speed. Stumpity stump stump, to the rhythm of the drum and crutch.

Speaking of…

Pardon me, folx, the drums, the drums, are calling. Blargh. Might as well put some stuff away while I’m moving, and tidy up a bit. I’ll come back to this later, and post it, and be thankful I’m holding steady enough to keep writing these stories that you-all are reading. I've warned you it's weird in my head, some days more than others, welcome to the roller coaster, buckle up...