Brenda and I went to see the in-house educator at my doctor’s office yesterday. She was nice. Her name is Mary. She’s a retired educator who just does this on the side now. She gave us more information in the 45 minutes we spent with her than the doctor had given us in the multiple times we saw her.
Brenda was coming to the appointment from a work meeting in the city, so I asked her to stop at the cigar shop to see if they had any cool looking cigar boxes to store my diabetes medicine and gear in. I love cigar boxes. I’m not a big smoker, but I love the boxes. I have them all over the house for various purposes. She grabbed a couple of boxes she thought might work.
When she walked into the doctor's office her hair was all windblown because she had been driving with the windows down. She explained she was fearful she smelled like cigar smoke. I told her I couldn’t smell it, but it got a conversation going with Mary who said she used to love collecting cigar boxes when she was a kid.
Mary showed me how to use the pen and pen needles. It looked easy enough. Then we pretended that a little stress ball that looked like a pillow was my stomach, and she gave it a shot of insulin with the pen. Then she let me go through the steps and give it a shot. I can only imagine how many times that little stress ball-pillow has gotten a shot and how much insulin that thing has taken in. And never once has it tasted sugar.
I asked her if the numb sensations in my hands and feet will reverse as my body adjusts to having insulin in it. She said it might get worse before it gets better, but it should eventually reverse.
We left the office, and I saw Brenda moving quickly to her van and then come back. She asked if I cared if she gave one of the cigar boxes to Mary. I said I thought it was a great idea. She disappeared into the office and came back out smiling. Mary called me later to share something the doctor wanted relayed. “And thank you for the cigar box,” she said. I told her she was welcome.
So I took my first insulin shot last night. I’m on Lantus Solostar. 10 units per night. It helped with the numbers. This morning’s BG reading was 152. Probably the first time it’s been in the 100s for a very long time. I was pretty excited to see it. It’s a pretty amazing thing when your body actually has insulin its system.
Today was pretty good. I had more carbs than I should have, so I need to crack down on that, but it’s a process I believe will get better as the routine becomes normalized. It can’t take too long, though, or the new routine will be to treat things lightly. The routine needs to be much more hardcore. This disease won’t be coming at me lightly, so I need to go at it just as hard.