News Dave's Kidney My Super Hero
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The Post-Gazette's Dave Templeton blogs about his life with Diabetes I and his work to maintain kidney function, including exploring his options for transplant. Guide to commenting | Terms of Service |
Give it one easy opportunity and BAM!
But I have a secret weapon against this deadly "roommate."
Code Name: Suellen.
Actually, Code Name, I mean, Suellen, is my dear wife. Give her your condolences on your own time. Whenever Diabetes tries pulling me down and destroying me, she steps onto the scene like Wonder Woman, without the tights.
Warning: You don't want Suellen standing between you and your demonic goal. Believe me, I've experienced that, too, and failed. Bam! Pow! Wham!. She's, let's say, determined. She knows how to battle evil or anyone or anything trying to diminish her lifestyle or good mood. Her glances can be heat-seeking missiles and her words can pierce like adder venom. She knows how to flash the electric look or utter a shakedown comment that will stop you dead in your miserable tracks.
Again, I can give you personal examples.
When action is necessary, Suellen swooshes into action like a Navy Seal, without the tights.
Whenever I fall unconscious from too much insulin or not enough sugar -- and that has happened more times than I care to admit in recent months -- Suellen takes impromptu action.
She knows when my sugar levels start to dip. She says my lip twitches or I have a silly look — at least a sillier look than normal — that provides the only clue she needs. She surges into action with her armory of sugary weapons including her favorite: honey she rubs on my gums.
She also fills a glass with grape juice or cider or fetches a ready bottle of glucose tablets. And if I'm too far gone to put anything into my mouth, she gets her trusty syringe filled with glucagon, a hormone to correct low blood sugar, that she injects into my hip (with glee).
Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this nightmarish world of repetitive thoughts and crazy insights and flashing colors and wobbly visions. I recognize faces but can't understand why they are looking at me. When I start coming out of shock and reality begins to solidify, I'm shaking out of control from low blood sugar and soaking wet from profuse sweating.
Even then, my sugar remains low and Sue is there encouraging me with the steely persistence of an enemy interrogator: Drink this juice! Eat these jelly beans!
If there were a Congressional Medal of Honor for saving people from insulin shock, she'd be a many-time recipient. She's the Audie Murphy of insulin-shock rescue. And if she had a mere dollar for every time she's brought me back from this irrational, wobbly, fractured, frustrating otherworld of hypoglycemic reaction, she could finally afford that beloved Bobcat excavator she's always wanted.
She's the reason I'm still here.
Of course, in payment for her services, I must listen to her post-episode lectures on preventing low blood sugar in the future. She remains forever appalled that I let it happen and that unhappiness is roundly expressed whenever I'm within earshot.
But, for now, I wanted you to know about my secret weapon as a person with brittle diabetes. Everyone with this insulin-dependent disease needs his or her own super hero.
Mine is — and envision her name arching across the night sky in red letters — S-U-E-L-L-E-N.
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written by Terry D, August 30, 2011 - 10:54 AM
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