Circumstances beyond my control, I awoke this morning to find that my blogs were trapped inside my computer, which would not work. This is a fixable problem that would barely register in my life were it not Thursday, and therefore, blog update day. I wrote a piece about my Fitbit. It was all ready to go. Yet here I sit at my fathers’ desk with his weird keyboard trying to peck out something, anything…
It’s been a bad week. I won’t go into much detail but the main problem for me is that I have been very sick. I’ve been to the ER several times, and subsequently released to go forth and get sick again. Tomorrow I am having a procedure that will hopefully alleviate some of my tummy troubles, but they are also looking at the possibility that my pancreas is playing a role.
This guy, again.
The first time my pancreas revolted I was 16 and failing all my classes. I was sleeping though them, then coming home and sleeping when I should have been doing homework, so of course I was failing. My teachers mostly wrote me off as a screwup that year, save two. One showed great concern that I was not myself, certain that the screwup label was ill-advised. Another, who had taught me for three years at this point, insisted something was medically wrong. So, my mother came home and tested my blood sugar, and sure enough, I had a whopping case of diabetes.
I spent that night in the ER with my parents and my friend Chelsea, who was good enough to come with me so that I didn’t have a total panic attack. She stayed all night and even went to school the next morning to tell my friends I was ok. It meant a lot to me then, and means a lot to me now. But back to my pancreas…
Anyway, the docs decide that while it’s producing insulin, it’s either not enough or the insulin is not doing its job. Therefore, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, not the dreaded Type 1 my mother was always certain I would acquire. This was November, 1999. 20 years ago.
20 years! And now it’s making its reunion tour by messing with my stomach? Unacceptable. Doc wants to put me on pancreatic enzymes. I don’t know what that is or what it does, but I just cannot believe that we are still messing around with this piece of crap organ.
I mean, they might as well take the damn thing. What has it ever done for me except make me sick? I already take two shots a day for my diabetes, so it’s like I have Type 1 anyway. Can one get their pancreas removed? Do they do transplants? Is this all just wishful thinking?
I’ve been sick since sixteen and my body continues to fail me even twenty years later. My mother likes to talk about how strong I am for facing these battles, both physical and mental, and I appreciate her sentiment but the truth is, I don’t have a choice. There is nothing but waking up each day praying that I feel well enough to live that day out loud. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, like yesterday, I know I will be in the ER the second I open my eyes. The point is that I don’t have a choice to be strong or not. It’s either that or give up, and I’m not very good at throwing in the towel. So you won’t find surrender here, and you can call me strong if you want to, and maybe choosing to soldier on each day is strength, but I’ll be damned if I give up. I’m not a quitter, I’m a problem solver.
Ham 'N Eggs 