Life Begins… Again

insulininjectionwoman I was born October 6, 1972 at 5:05 pm. I was born at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Five years and one month after I was born, my parents got divorced. It didn’t bother me at all. I was happy they didn’t use me as an excuse to stay together. I have no brothers or sisters. I’m it. They had one shot to “get it all right” and things went terribly wrong!

I’ve heard Diagnosed Day called a million different things. I heard it called DX Day, anniversary day, THAT day. I call mine my second birthday. I was going through life and having a good time. A few minor problems once in a while. Busted my head open, got hit by a car…..normal kid stuff. That’s the way it was until I was in 6th grade.

I was 10 years old and I started getting headaches. They would be so severe, I’d hide under a bed to get away from light and I vomited, a lot. I also began to get these sores in on my mouth. Both inside and out. Right where my upper lip and lower lip are joined would get this small and extremely painful sore. This stuff continued until I was 13 years old. None of it seemed to be predictable and I was told by a pediatrician that I had migraine headaches.

13 years old is a wonderful time. You are just now a teenager and life seems like an endless world of discovery. It was 1986 and i’ll never forget that summer. How could I forget it? June was great. The weather here on the Gulf Coast was great. Afternoon thunderstorms occured daily and made for fun in the water that was left standing. July looked to be even better. I was promoted to team leader at day camp because I was a teenager now. It was my job to help some of the younger kids to work on art projects and co-ordinate games and all kinds of stuff. I was looking forward to it. Day camp ran for two weeks each summer and was set to begin July 7th. I was also looking forward to July 4th. I was a bit cranky that day and a little tired but didn’t seem too out of it for picnics and fireworks.

I would be spending July 11, 12 and 13 with Daddy and looked forward to that also. I went to day camp that day and we had learned about measuring height and weight. I was 5’5″ tall and weighed 98 pounds. Daddy picked me up on July 11 after work and we stopped and got a pizza which had become our Friday tradition. We had our usual pizza eating contest while watching reruns of The Honeymooners on TBS. We drank a lot of Cokes that evening too.

Saturday was filled with swimming and slurpies from the local corner store. We went to a party at his girlfriend’s house and on the way home, I was very very tired and thirsty but I’d been out in the heat playing. I’d sneak ice cubes out of the ice chest and suck on them. My mouth seemed so terribly dry. I just didn’t feel like me at all.

Sunday July 13th was not good. My mother was newly married and had fallen ill 6 weeks prior to July 13. Her first day back at work was July 14th. She was not in a good mood about it. I had six slurpies that day. When I got home to my mother’s and told my dad goodbye, I went into the bathroom and vomited for the first time since feeling bad. I told my mother I didn’t feel well and she told me she didn’t have time for it and to go lay down. She told me to get plenty of fluids and she and my grandma went grocery shopping. While they were gone, I tried to drink coke and tea and kool aid and eat a popsicle but it all came right back up. We soon ran out of most stuff so I tried some of my grandma’s Diet Pepsi. The teaspoonful that I drank stayed down but that was the only thing that stayed down. I don’t remember much else that afternoon and evening.

July 14, 1986. I don’t remember this day at all. I do know that my grandmother stayed with me and called my mother at work (her first day back at work in 6 weeks) and told her I was very sick and that my eyes were rolling back in my head. She came home from work and took me to Dr. Groff in Pascagoula. When she brought me in, they took me straight back to an exam room because I was so out of it. He looked at me and asked for a BG meter. It was an AccuCheck meter. He pricked my finger and stuck the blood on the strip. Two minutes later, the meter registered that something was wrong as it could not produce a number. He looked at mother and told her “your child is diabetic, I’ll meet you at the hospital”. Singing River Hospital was across the street and we were there in a matter of seconds. My blood glucose reading was 643 on the big machine at the hospital. That is a good bit above the normal scale. I had an IV drip.

On July 15th, I was doing ok. I was very weak and very tired but they asked if I could stand on a scale. With some help, I got out of bed and stepped up on the scale. There had been a drastic change. On Friday, July 11, I had been 5’5″ tall and 98 pounds heavy. Now, on July 15, I was still 5’5″ tall but I weighed just 64 pounds. My sugar had been so high for that weekend that my body had started to consume it’s own body fat in order to survive. This was the first time I realized “something is really wrong with me” and it’s the point at which I feel like I was reborn into a twilight zone world of diets, finger sticks, shots and a whole lot more.

It’s now quite a few years down the road. I’m 32, happy, healthy (hBa1C is 6.5). Best of all, I’ve got a wonderful husband and great step kids. I’ve got a nice farm and home that’s mine (we don’t rent any more). Things are pretty darned good. I’ve also got an insulin pump now and we are trying to have a baby. We’ll see how this year goes!