yevlax

Sugar Shock


I realize that after a certain amount of medical malady, certain problems only become fascinating to the person who's actually ill, or, nurses. I actually know a lot of nurses, and they are still quite capable of squicking me out, even though I should be immune by now. So anyway, I try to pepper my blog with non-medical stuff from time to time to break up the monotony. I also know that a few people read in to see whats going on with me, because it's a lot to keep track of and they worry (and its more convenient in blog form). So for those that 'don't wanna hear about medical stuff', I will issue a disclaimer: WARNING: Medical post below.

I'm not just being snarky on that last point, either. You think you're sick of it?


WARNING: Medical post below


Good News: I am convinced that the new meds they are giving me on the bone marrow side are working. There have been consistent rises in my hemoglobin levels for a month now, something that hasn't happened in the past year and a half that I've been losing blood. The levels are almost to the threshold where it will seem my body is actually making red blood cells. I will cry if that happens, because it means that this nightmare will be over soon.

Bad News: These drugs are giving me side effects almost as bad as the anemia. Most of them are supposed to be temporary, and sweet cuppin cakes, I hope they're temporary.

First, somebody call Wilford Brimley, 'cause I got the diabeteetus. Diabetes runs in the family, and it's something I was supposed to get, instead of all this weird crap that no one has ever heard of. I'm sure I'm mangling this explanation somehow, but a basic point that was given to me was that the diabetes is aggravated by the fact that I have far less blood in my body but the same amount of sugar. The sugar crystals stick to the blood cells and choke it, because there aren't enough cells to share. Well, okay, that makes sense.

I love food, its one of the last vices left to me by this point, so I was actually more disturbed at the idea of dieting than some of the more horrific aspects of my latest drugs. Chocolate is one of my very favorite things on earth. If there was such a thing as chocolate-flavored medication, I'd have been dead from overdose long before this blog ever existed.

Okay, fine, I've got diabetes, too. Now what?

"Watch your carbs and sugars," they said, and didn't give me much direction past that for a week. So I went out and got a lot of wheat stuff, crackers, bread, etc. I like wheat bread anyway. Actually looked at some labels for the first time. After a few days, I noticed that I did actually start to feel a little better. We'll get back to Oatmeal-Shilling Disease in a moment.

The main drug I'm on for the blood counts is called cyclophoshamide. It weakens my immune system, for reasons more complicated than I can describe without mangling it worse than diabetes. The point is that is seems to be working. However, my immune system is already pretty wonky from all the years on anti-rejection drugs for my old transplant. So in addition to diabetes, I'm coming down with some nasty infections. I'm getting sores in very, very uncomfortable places. It hurts to sit down too long right now.

Another one of those places is my mouth. It makes my voice a scratchy whisper, and makes it very painful to eat. I actually thought the last bit might work out, because I've got the diabeteeus now and am supposed to quit stuffing my fat face so much, right? I was getting pretty low on groceries the last few days, but decided to just skim my food supply until I could get more. In hindsight, it was a bad idea to eat everything on wheat crackers while I have open sores in my mouth. Ouchie.

So I went in for my weekly Cancer Center visits, and told the about the sores. It was a form of herpes (I've had fever blisters on the lips before), and they gave me a prescription for it. I know there's several different forms of herpes but I was slightly amused at getting this without being sexually active for so long. It was certainly painful enough that I'd wondered if this was what the actual STD was like.

On my visit, I arrived feeling shaky and a little dizzy. It felt like flu or something to me, so that's what I described it as. They took a few hours to quarantine me and rule out flu, then asked if/how much I'd eaten that day. "Not much, just a small sandwich for breakfast?" Then they told me the new drug i was on for diabetes control could actually cause low blood sugar instead of high, and I'd have to watch that now, too.

"After all this bad news, I can live with a disease that forces me to eat a sandwich every once in a while," I joked. I ate, felt better again. My friend Jackie helped me get some groceries and I filled the fridge so I'd have things to munch on in the coming month. I spoke to a diabetes specialist and they gave me a little hand-held device to check my blood sugar each morning (on top of the pills and iron-removal supplement). She explained what to do when I started getting 'the shakes' again. I was told it's something I have to take care of rather quickly or could 'pass out and become unresponsive'.

In addition to the new drugs, they also upped my prednisone dosage as high as they felt safe to do so. Prednisone is a drug that scares the crap out of some people, and it's a steroid. I've been on it for almost eighteen years now, in smaller amounts. I do know that its making me hungry. Like, pothead hungry. Which is going to mix well with diabetes in the coming months.

tl;dr- My new meds are working! Side effects are a different kind of hell. I have diabetes and am struggling to adjust to that on top of everything else.

You should eat Quaker Oats. They are good for you.