December 5, 2001
I'll huff and puff

Well, me and my close friends Asthma and Diabetes are having a few WWF rounds here in mountain country. Asthma started waking my ass up in the middle of the night and after the nipple on the nebulizer broke, I was sucking on inhalers and wheezing my way to the dawn's early light. I had to speak rather directly to the clerk at the respiratory machine place about getting the insurance approval and getting my machine NOW, thank you. I called twice, the second time, much more direct and fanatic than the first call. At which point, she miraculously knew her boss's cell number. Imagine that. I should have had Asthma and Diabetes double-team her. Sheee-it. When I went to pick up my machine, she complained about being yelled at and I made sure she understood that I was not yelling at all. She agreed. I said that indeed I had made a point NOT to yell, but that I really really super duper needed that nebulizer or I was going to end up at the emergency room and so I had been persistent and pushy to that end.

Breathing. Very important. Clerk woman's feelings hurt, comparatively, NOT important. Funny thing that.

I am not only on steroids, but on a double dose of steroids which is making my friend Diabetes really pissy. So Asthma is taking 'roids which is totally kicking Diabetes' ass and I'm in the middle trying to referee this thing and well, it isn't pretty.

This morning, my fasting blood sugar was 144. If I get 144 after I eat, it goes away after I walk around the block. I usually don't get 144...like ever. (Okay, I get around 167 if I eat a Big Mac and fries, but if you know me, you know I generally don't eat a lot of that kind of crap. I'm a chicken and turkey girl, and I have been changing my potato habits to include yams and sweet potatoes because they have a lower glycemic index and am learning to answer,"No, I don't want the value meal, I want a sandwich and a diet coke." ) Right now, I can't walk around the block though because I start wheezing and couging and sucking on inhalers and it's all rather evil and cyclical.

I ate a perfect breakfast: fruit cup with 19 grams of carbs, a half cup of lowfat cottage cheese, and one of those dinky sugar free yogurts with 11 grams of carbs -- exactly 2 carbs, one fat, one protein and one hour later, my sugars were 154. This after walking all over the supermarket to burn things up a little.

It's all very depressing to be at the whim of this stupid disease, despite how tight and how good my food is, how much weight I've lost, and how danged sorry I am for myself. Asthma can take me down like that (snaps fingers). At least, if I'm exercising and eating right, I feel like I can manage Diabetes, but when Asthma kicks in I'm their little masochistic ho-bitch. Bend over and wheeze, baby.

What is really odd, is that I know when my sugars are bad because I have this place in my back where they did the epidural when I had Genny that aches. So if I eat something I shouldn't, I hurt. The worse my sugars are over time, the worse it aches. It hasn't ached in ages now and this morning, it was a Big Ow.

I realize 144 isn't much for some diabetics. It's just a lot for me. High morning sugars for me are about 125. Usually I range between 90-115 in the morning. Not perfect, but certainly pretty darned good for a non-medicating type 2.

I suspect I'm going to be taking some kind of meds or insulin or something to get me through before this is all over. I just wish Asthma and Diabetes would switch to the World-wide Rassling Federation, get married, and grope in the dark on a honeymoon far far away.

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