So the past two weeks have been sort of nuts, and hence why I haven’t written. So I’ll bring you up to speed and explain the title.
After my last post, I got a killer stomach bug, and I ended up in the ER. When you’re me—meaning, you take a lot of meds, you have blood sugar level issues, and you need to be able to keep things down—you don’t really “wait out” a stomach bug. (In fact, I learned today I get to give myself four hours before going to an ER for treatment.)
So after a day of nausea and 12 hours of vomiting (WHAT JOY) and abdominal pain, I took myself to the local free-standing ER, which is excellent. My mom met me there, Dad drove my car home, and four hours later I’d had IV fluids, anti-emetics (anti-vomiting meds), and pain meds, I felt a lot better, everything calmed down, and I got to go home. I spend Tuesday sort of out of it. Wednesday had a ton of energy and did laundry and some taking out of trash. Thursday, pretty back to normal—but I needed to take my car to the service place to get a tire patched. Friday, normalcy! Saturday, Harry Potter tea with my writers ‘ group (post on that coming), and I went to Mass for the first time in two weeks. Hallelujah!
So, that was last week. This week, the tire repair didn’t hold, so I had to call AAA to put the spare on on Monday, get the tire checked out Tuesday, to find out I need a new tire, which will be on my car tomorrow, which meant that I had to borrow my mom’s car to get to my endocrinology appointment today.
Honestly, I was really freaked about this appointment. I had visions of insulin shots multiple times a day and constant finger sticks and food restrictions and all sorts of evil things conjured by the word “diabetes.” I really, really, really didn’t want a heavy-duty diagnosis. I was freaked out.
I had a long appointment today (2 hours), where I met with great, wonderful, smart people, who went over my history and all my labs with a fine-tooth comb. They looked at everything. They asked about family history. The fact that my mom has five sisters, and that my grandma is almost 90 and in pretty darn good health, is great for my doctors because there’s a lot of female family history to look at when we’re talking about health indicators.
My endocrinologist thinks that what I have is a type of CF related diabetes (CFRD), which is not Type 1 diabetes, even though insulin is involved, and it’s not type 2 diabetes. It’s its own special thing. But what this did for me was release a big burden I’d been carrying around—the idea that I had done this to myself. That if I had done more or tried harder or whatever, that I wouldn’t have been in that office.
That’s not the case. Dr. W (the new doc) said that just about every CF person will get CFRD at some point, because we’re living longer. The severity will vary, but it’s probably going to happen. Throw in the fact that I’m on three drugs that mess around with blood sugar production and regulation, and, yeah. This was, most likely, going to happen.
We don’t exactly have a plan yet, because we need data, which will be provided by two things:
Me checking my blood glucose level at various times a day
Me wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) for a week. This little do-dad checks your blood sugar every five minutes with a little sensor. So we’ll get tons of data, cascades of data! And with that data, we can make a plan.
The other great thing as that this doctor asked me if I was OK with this plan. That’s so important to me. I want to be OK with what we’re doing. And with this doctor, I do. I feel secure and I trust her to do the right thing to get things under control.
So even though I’m going to be doing a lot of finger sticks over the next few days/weeks, I don’t really mind. Because I don’t feel like a total failure, like I brought this upon myself. I didn’t. This is the result of being 37 with CF and a double-lung transplant. It’s the way it goes.
We get the data, we make a plan, and we move on.