My blood sugar has been a problem for years.  It has been at the top of my list of things to fix and the back of my mind since the honeymoon ended.  I remember my honeymoon.  High blood sugar was not one of my abilities.  I could take 1 unit of insulin and I would be low.  It did not matter what I ate.  My A1C was awesome. This diabetes thing is a sinch.

The honeymoon ended very abruptly.  Don’t they all.  I was used to waking up in the morning with a blood sugar of 110.  Every morning, like clock work, I would wake up and verify that my blood sugar was 110 before taking 1 unit of insulin and eating a bowl of cereal.  Then it happened.  My endocrinologist said that we wouldn’t know when or how quickly but eventually my pancreas was going to give up completely and the honeymoon would be over.  That’s what you thought he said.  You barely spoke Italian, and he barely spoke English.  He could have been saying that I was going on strike and you probably wouldn’t have know better.  He wasn’t kidding.  I woke up one morning and my blood sugar was over 300.  The only time I had ever been that high before was when I was diagnosed.  Huston, we have a problem.  The honeymoon was over.  I was now married to this disease.  I went from 4 units of Lantus and around 4 units of Humalog a day to 20 units of Lantus a day and around 7 units of Humalog a meal.  The worse part is that large of a transition is still done slowly.  I was high for weeks.

This is where we pick up today.  My blood sugar is almost always high.  This diabetes thing is NOT a sinch?  In fact, it gets in the way of real life.  It doesn’t matter how low or how high my blood sugar is, life is still going on around me.  Sometimes it feels just like that.  Life is going on around me.  Today was another crazy day.  I think I took two breathes around noon and another around five.  We had some parents thing at Tata’s school.  We?  As in you, Tata, and Squishy. We also had to drop off and pick up Mamma from her school.  And don’t let us forget, Squishy doesn’t eat three squares a day.  She eats when ever she’s hungry.  She eats whenever she’s… You’ve said that.  Drive home, drive to Mamma’s school, drive home, feed Squishy, drive to Tata’s school, drive home, feed Squishy, drive to McDonald’s, feed Tata, drive to Mamma’s school, drive home, complain about driving in blog.  I had the distinct advantage/disadvantage, it’s all relative, of not having diabetes until I was twenty-five years old.  I remember going through drive through, eating in the car, and arriving at my destination with the only side affect being a touch of gas from the carbonated beverage that I used to wash my food down.  Now, I have the additional problem of a high blood sugar.  When going through a drive through, is it customary to test one’s blood and take insulin before or after ordering.  I have just decided that drive through is not a diabetic friendly concept.

As a diabetic, I am required to slow down.  I am required to stop what I am doing to check my blood, count my carbs, take my insulin, and eat on a schedule.  While everyone else is working and trying to get ahead, I am working and trying to keep my feet.  Never really saw it that way before.

I need an internal alarm clock to tell me when my sugar is high.  When that internal alarm goes off, I need an automatic process for giving myself the exact amount of insulin I need.  Sounds familiar.  Isn’t that my old job?  One day there will be a cure.  I am not holding my breath, but man it would be nice to be able to eat without thinking about insulin.  I feel that I am lucky because I know many diabetics do not have the luxury of remembering what that was like.  Or is it that I am cursed because one doesn’t miss what one doesn’t remember.

To top it all off, my wife just realized that her soft drink from the McDonald’s is a diet coke which means that mine was probably not.  Time to go check my sugar again.