After Grandma finished letting Grandpa know how unhappy she was when he failed to do his monitoring of his blood sugar like he should each and every day, she immediately went and took a nice, relaxing bubble bath.  When she does announce that she is going to take a nice, relaxing bubble bath, we all know that she is really upset.  She gets that way about Grandpa.  She sure works hard to help him stay healthy.  She is forever keeping up with monitor options and supplies that might benefit Grandpa by making his life simpler, since he has to do this certain routine every day.  Sometimes Grandpa surprises Grandma by talking about how much he appreciates what she does, especially when it comes to helping him keep his diabetes under control.  He likes to tell us how in the beginning, years and years ago, that he was in complete denial about having diabetes.  But of course, Grandma does not do denial.  That little episode did not last long at all.  When Grandma decides on how things should be, that is the way they will be, no doubt about it.  Grandma always gets her way, because her way is right when it concerns Grandpa.

My best friend and I just had the best day! I told her I would pick her up and drive her to her doctor's office so she could pick up her diabetes supplies, so, that's what we did early in the morning. It was a really nice drive. We were talking in the car about what's going on in our lives right now and about our different concerns. She talked quite a bit about her diabetes and how she's coping with that and I talked about some of my anxieties. She started seeing a new doctor so I asked her how she liked him and she thought he was pretty nice. After we picked up her diabetes supplies, I suggested we go to the shopping mall and see a movie and then I told her when it's dark out we could take a walk along the beach. She loved that idea! That's exactly what we wound up doing too. We saved our really deep conversation for the beach where we talked about really intriguing stuff, like boys! Ha! She said there's this guy in her math class that she's had a crush on and she's hoping he asks her to go to the school dance that's coming up!

A glucose monitor is how we know when we are obeying the health care plan effectively. The developing world is seeing a rapid increase in this Type II Diabetes and the Center for Disease Control has already called diabetes type II an epidemic, which must be tackled. There are support groups in place, which can extremely helpful if you were just diagnosed or even if you have had it for a while and need the guidance. The groups can be helpful if you need insight into the natural attempts at curing, they can be very helpful to you if you want to learn about food plans and options. There are entire cookbooks devoted to diabetes. But, you can learn what works for people of similar living styles as you through support groups. You can learn how to calculate your carbohydrate exchanges. You can learn about what foods help you better get to your goals. There will be others there who have completed the stage you are at now no matter where you currently are. You need to learn how to control the various sugars you eat. You can learn from the groups what controls your sugars better. The goal is to use the support group to better get at your feelings and get the advice and questions you need answered. The experience is there. You need them to help change your lifestyle. They will tell you what glucose monitors work best too just be sure to bring the one you got for free from your physician for them to look at.

When I was 14 years old, my father got diagnosed with diabetes.  He used to shake his head and wonder how that could have happened to him.  I did a little research on the topic and found out that no one really knows what causes diabetes, but poor eating habits and a lack of exercise definitely contribute.  This obviously explains my father.  He’s gone through diet plan after diet plan and they all fail because he lacks the discipline to stick to any of them.  Every night when he can’t sleep, he digs into a whole block of ice cream and finishes it.  His idea of exercise is to climb up the front steps to walk into the house.  Other than that, he’s so lazy that he drives his car to throw something in the mailbox that’s just down the street.  Finally, he used to drink excessively.  I once asked him what his limit was and he said 30 beers.  He drank so much he used to chase me around the house until he cornered me and started lecturing me that I need to join the football team so I could get a college scholarship.  So in the end, him getting diabetes wasn’t much of a shock to me. 

My parents have always been hypochondriacs.  I spent a good deal of my childhood waiting around in the lobbies of doctors’ offices while they were checked out for influenza, cancer, bipolar disorders, and whatever plague was making headlines on the news for that month.  To kill time, I often sifted through all the health brochures and sometimes the nurses or receptionists would give me something to play with like a free diabetes test kit.  Before they did that though, they always remembered to take out the needle or anything else sharp that I might cut myself with or hurt somebody else.  It wouldn’t help if I got a paper cut off one of the brochures, but I would get bored reading them and start folding them up into random shapes.  And, yeah, I occasionally threw them at other people sitting down in the lobby.  Most people laughed it off or ignored it completely.  It must have helped that I was a little kid and should obviously have been off playing in the park somewhere instead of withering away in a dull lobby.   At least I know why I was never any good at sports or camping.  How could anyone have expected me to? 

Diabetes Insulin Care, was all the statement read. This meant medicines. I looked at Tara. She just shrugged. It could be worse, she said. I was devastated. I'm not a pill popper or medicine hound, so the idea of having to take something everyday was new to me. And depressing. I didn't want to have to go down this road, but I was having problems. It all started last summer, when I noticed that I was running to the toilet a lot. I was also thirsty a lot. These things I didn't think too much about, as I chalked it up to the hot and dry weather and the fact that I was always drinking something. It was when I had the blurred vision that I really got concerned. I didn't connect the first two symptoms with the last one though, so I was thinking the worse. I made an appointment with Dr. Clinton, and she gave me a complete physical. Then she referred me for more tests.  She suspected I was having trouble, even though I hadn't seen her for nearly 15 years. I went to the care facility, did the tests, then waited a few days for the results. Usually if you don't hear anything right away it's good news. I hadn't heard a thing. In fact, I had to call Dr. Clinton's office. Then she told me to come in and see her as soon as I could.

I used to work in a health foods store with my friend Tim.  He’d been working there for years and had become the manager so when I needed a job for a few months just to get by it was easy to get hired.  The place sold protein, creatine, diabetes products, smoothies, vitamins, healthy choice meals, fruits, vegetables, and all the rest of the bland plastic tasting food you can think of.  The store’s owner was barely ever around and that’s a good thing since he’s one of the strangest men I’ve ever encountered.  Short and stocky, he waddled around the store like the Penguin from the old Batman TV series in the 1960s.  He even made all those weird sounds that the Penguin did and half the time he actually walked around with an umbrella even though it wasn’t raining.  I couldn’t really understand him when he spoke and often Tim had to translate if he wanted something from me since he somehow understood him.  I was underpaid the whole time I worked there so when I finally found something better I was glad to quit.  First, I picked up some freelance writing work and then I finally found a job in copywriting, which was the field I always wanted to work in. 

While we were eating dinner with Mr. Callahan, his cell phone rang.  He was still working every day, despite being 95 years old.  He had known about my hobby of collecting antique lancets, and he had put out some inquiries on where I might find some that are in private collections, and this was one of his work associates calling him back.  Mr. Callahan's friend from work, Oscar, has a big source of them.  His grandfather used to work for a medical supply house back in the 1920's, and he has things going back well before that time.  I was getting excited.  I wanted to go right now to  look at the collection.  Tara stopped me.   I had a project due for work tomorrow, so that would be out of the question for tonight, though Mr. Callahan was interested.  He has a lot of energy.  He is 95 years old and is in great shape.  I asked him how he enjoyed his meal, and he really liked it.   He said mostly that he is a vegetarian.   Not because of ideology, but for health, but he does enjoy a good steak now and then.  He laughed, and said it was his only vice.  He rarely drinks, and the women chase him. He laughed.