I’ve gotten several questions about this lately – from my mother to a Type 1 diabetic.
Yes, I am a Type 2 diabetic but have tendencies towards Type 1. Whether I have both Type 1 and Type 2 or whether my pancreasis doesn’t function at all any more (Will Dubois writes about this in books), I am insulin dependent and have been for over 8 years. Maybe as long as 10 years.
I was diagnosed almost 10 years ago. I went to the doctor before school started and he scheduled a fasting glucose test for as soon as possible which ended up being a staff development day in September (I did the staff development in the summer). I remember going to the lab in the morning, drinking glucose and getting madder and madder every minute. Between two of the blood draws I went to Aubrey Hawkin’s memorial site (an Irving police office and gentleman who was a good friend of mine and who got gunned down on Christmas Eve). That accounted for some of the mad.
The lab only gathered the samples, the results were read later and sent to my doctor’s office during the weekend.
As the weekend progressed, I got madder and madder.
When I had passed 5 people on Monday morning and just wanted to slap them, I knew something horrible was wrong and called my doctor’s office as they were trying to call me. They told me to drop everything and come in NOW. I called and asked for a sub for the day.
My blood sugar was out of site, they gave me metforum and instructions to attend a diabetes class. I did the next couple of days. My blood sugar wouldn’t go down, and so we almost immediately went to insulin.
That was then.
For the past two years, I’ve been so afraid of going low, I’ve been running too high. I have been forgetting to check my blood sugar and in all ways possible been a bad diabetic. I’ve been lucky and haven’t had any complications, except for hypo-and hyper- glycemic unawareness.
This is where the dog comes in.
She is aware.
Yeah, it’s a pain to drag her around and keep her with me 24 / 7 but with her around I can keep good control again and I’m slowly starting to feel better.
It’s nice.
It’s a drag to explain it all to total strangers. It will be interesting to have her on campus. But in the long run it will be better.
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