Diabetes diagnosis day. DD-day. December 11, 2008.
I hate and love the letter “D”.
2 months earlier I had an ear infection and fever for a week. A week home from school, terrible medicine and a week’s worth of make up work. It didn’t make me quite that happy. This was the week before Halloween. I didn’t go trick or treating.
The weekend of Thanksgiving is when trouble started to brew. It started with peeing a little bit more and becoming thirstier. And I couldn’t- wouldn’t- do much any more. I had no more energy. But according to others, I was lazy. They didn’t know how I felt.
When I went back to school I started to completely fail math tests. It was too much work for me. I remember trying to eat my lunch at school one day and just feeling like crap afterwards and almost not being able to walk after lunch. My blood sugars were probably soaring after lunch.
Then I started taking a water bottle everywhere. It held 64 oz. of water and I filled it up about twice every hour I could after drinking it. I estimate that, on the low side, I drank 300 ounces of water a day.
At night, I would take this water bottle and a small water bottle to bed with me. Usually, I would drink all of it before midnight.
I also woke up at night basically choking and needing water. I felt like I was dying.
My fingers started to crack and bleed. They turned bright red at the fingertips to the point where teachers at school told me to stop coloring my fingers. I wasn’t.
I would pee every hour or more. I never used to go much at all. Teachers thought I was lying and just going into the hall to skip class, but I wasn’t.
I would get up about six times a night to pee and it sucked. I had to drag myself out of bed and wake up everyone in the house (my door is very squeaky!).
I lost 14 pounds in three weeks. I didn’t know it, though. My mom said later that my feet looked like skeletons. She didn’t tell me that right away, though.
The night before the doctor appointment, several big things happened.
I e-mailed my best friend who was worried about me. She wished me luck. I told her I’d be back to school by noon.
At dinner, I chugged 1/2 a gallon of chocolate milk. I didn’t think I was chugging.
I thought I was going to die. My mom said it wouldn’t be anything. They’d just tell me to stop eating so much sugar or something. I cried myself to sleep.
The next morning, I got in my school uniform and went to the doctor’s office. I peed in the cup and they later said that I had glucose in my urine.
A nurse came in and did my first fingerstick test. Too high to register.
The doctor came in and told me that I needed to go the hospital. She said she thought I had diabetes. My mom started bawling. The things I said were, “Am I going to die?” and “Can I skip school today?”
“No and No.”
When we got to the hospital, they told me that I’d be there for three days. No school! Yeah! But then things sunk in. In the emergency room for five hours or more sucked, even though I watched movies. I had my blood drawn a bunch of times and an IV in. I was severely dehydrated.
Then I got a room in the diabetes unit. For three days I learned about diabetes.
I guess my Mom and Dad were in shock. They were there learning with me for the three days.
The nurses liked me. I wasn’t afraid of shots- I preferred them over pills- and I was cooperative. Of course, most of the other patients were younger and uncooperative.
Going home was good. I just sunk into the couch and breathed in the air of HOME. The hospital made me feel healthy, but my home made me feel even more healthy.
It was a relief being diagnosed.