My perspective in life is to always keep calm. Don't freak out. Life is coming, things are happening. So deal with it.
Things that happen to you are things that happen. There are no good things or bad things. There are just things. Things happen. After they happened, they become the things that happened. I had decided at a very young age that lamenting things which have happened is pointless. So, too, is lamenting that which may happen, which is happening, or which might've happened. Things happen the way that they do because that is the way that they happen and if they happened differently then everything down the line --- your entire future, which is now your present --- would not have happened the way that it did.
If there is no evil then we could never understand good. The same theory applies here. The things which happen to us make us grow and shape who we are. It may sound cliche; but I find that many time people don't take the time to sit down and actually consider the deeper meaning behind the cliche. We say these things, like: "Always look on the bright side!" or "Pain builds character" with all the thought of a child saying the pledge of allegiance. These so-called cliches are like songs to us and we rarely consider the words. And when we don't understand them as children then, as adults, we even use them as distractions to escape difficult questions
posed by our children, half heartedly, and the message is lost. How many times have you felt that "XXX builds character," was simply a way for yoru parents to get you to do something unpleasant? How many times have you wondered what "character" exactly was and why you even cared to have so much of it? Consider it now.
I did. Diabetes meant that I was probably going to have to take insulin for the rest of my life... And give up sugar? ...probably. And many other things. Stuff happens. It's not bad or good. I could sit around moping and getting depressed ---
---or
I could see this as a what it is. A problem. Every problem has a solution. So now there are some choices that I must make to fix the problem. But EVERY problem has a solution. There is no reason to give up, EVER. See problem, act to solve. Grow stronger. Live.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Diabetes
I have diabetes.
This is a hard thing to say.
This is a hard thing to hear.
But I was a scientifically trained individual with some basic medical knowledge, and this was the conclusion that I had already come to deep down inside my own heart in the places that I had tried many times to tell myself didn't exist. But they did. I had been peeing a lot, drinking a lot, weight loss, even my eyesight had suddenly been striking me as worse than usual. The tell-tale signs of diabetes, as anyone who watches medical-dramas too much could tell you. I was peeing out sugar. That meant that I was way too high in the amount of sugar in my blood. Which was why I was so thirsty. This also meant that I must not be making insulin. Insulin is manufactured in the body automatically to respond to the level of glucose --- sugar --- in your blood and is vital in the processes that allow your body to utilize that sugar for energy and, in doing so, take it out of the blood. I had been this way for a while --- a month, I thought --- and the sweet taste meant that acids were building up. Sugar was not getting digested properly.
It's called ketoacidosis. It's hell.
This is a hard thing to say.
This is a hard thing to hear.
But I was a scientifically trained individual with some basic medical knowledge, and this was the conclusion that I had already come to deep down inside my own heart in the places that I had tried many times to tell myself didn't exist. But they did. I had been peeing a lot, drinking a lot, weight loss, even my eyesight had suddenly been striking me as worse than usual. The tell-tale signs of diabetes, as anyone who watches medical-dramas too much could tell you. I was peeing out sugar. That meant that I was way too high in the amount of sugar in my blood. Which was why I was so thirsty. This also meant that I must not be making insulin. Insulin is manufactured in the body automatically to respond to the level of glucose --- sugar --- in your blood and is vital in the processes that allow your body to utilize that sugar for energy and, in doing so, take it out of the blood. I had been this way for a while --- a month, I thought --- and the sweet taste meant that acids were building up. Sugar was not getting digested properly.
It's called ketoacidosis. It's hell.
That Horrible Sweetness...
When I finally went to the hospital, I already knew there was a problem. I wasn't eating, I couldn't do anything. I was drinking water all the time and yet still getting this horrible sweet taste in my mouth. No matter what I ate --- salty or sweet --- the taste in my mouth eventually returned to that horrible sweetness... Even water was tasting bad to me; there was no escape. I felt weak. Dizzy. It left me sleeping all day. I would get up and try to eat something and then go straight back to bed. And I was supposed to be looking for jobs. I was supposed to be getting jobs... how was I going to work in this condition.
I had one good day before the end.
I went to my parents house where my mother had cooked up a good family dinner with all of my favorite food. And, for once, it was delicious. Somehow, for this one night, I was spared from my nightmare. There was soy chicken and curry and there was delicious mango. I ate and felt good. It was a kind of last meal.
The days that followed were the worst. I barely ate. I slept all day. I was wasting away. I knew what I had to do. Insurance or no, I had no choice. It was time to go to the emergency room. There was no other way out. I just wanted so badly to taste food again. To rid myself of that sweet taste that filled my mouth and lingered even after the brushing of teeth and gargling of mouth-wash. I just wanted to be ok again.
I had one good day before the end.
I went to my parents house where my mother had cooked up a good family dinner with all of my favorite food. And, for once, it was delicious. Somehow, for this one night, I was spared from my nightmare. There was soy chicken and curry and there was delicious mango. I ate and felt good. It was a kind of last meal.
The days that followed were the worst. I barely ate. I slept all day. I was wasting away. I knew what I had to do. Insurance or no, I had no choice. It was time to go to the emergency room. There was no other way out. I just wanted so badly to taste food again. To rid myself of that sweet taste that filled my mouth and lingered even after the brushing of teeth and gargling of mouth-wash. I just wanted to be ok again.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Something's not right...
I was a healthy individual. I didn't eat particularly bad food. I was not overweight. --- In fact, at present, I am rather underweight due to the the present circumstances --- I was an average American in the prime of my life. Twenty-four years old, no cares. I had been living in Japan for the past 2 years teaching English to the students of a small town in the North of Japan. My life was full and exciting and I fell in love with the woman who would soon become my wife. But returning to the US left me job seeking and with the tasks of finding a place to live and the related affairs that meant I might have to take a little while to do that. And then there was the fact that I wanted to return to graduate school in a scientific field, which meant that the job I was seeking should be in a field of science that would get me back into the game and give me experience for applying for graduate school. Needless to say, I was being picky. But I had saved up a large sum of money from my time in Japan, and I felt that it was safe enough. I had never been one to get caught with my pants down. There would be plenty of money to live off of and no problems as long as one of us didn't get sick.
...it didn't seem like much of a gamble at the time.
Searching for jobs IS a full time job, and I was constantly occupied by it. But somehow, I began to notice the problem. I know now that it must have lasted for at least as long as I had been in the states, but it took me longer to realize it. I was sick.
At first it was the frequent urination that I noticed. Usually I can sleep the night without going... but now I'm getting up a few times a night to go... thirsty a lot... well, that's because I'm peeing a lot, isn't it? ... And I was tired. But this was probably because I was constantly looking for jobs, going for interviews, and maybe because I was just stuck in the house all the time without good exercise/light/air... So I waited. If I was sick, I should wait until I got a job, then I would have insurance and I could see the doctor then. And it was probably nothing anyway. Old people pee a lot... maybe I'm just getting older... When you're busy it's easy to rationalize the little problems in your health.
...until they get worse.
...it didn't seem like much of a gamble at the time.
Searching for jobs IS a full time job, and I was constantly occupied by it. But somehow, I began to notice the problem. I know now that it must have lasted for at least as long as I had been in the states, but it took me longer to realize it. I was sick.
At first it was the frequent urination that I noticed. Usually I can sleep the night without going... but now I'm getting up a few times a night to go... thirsty a lot... well, that's because I'm peeing a lot, isn't it? ... And I was tired. But this was probably because I was constantly looking for jobs, going for interviews, and maybe because I was just stuck in the house all the time without good exercise/light/air... So I waited. If I was sick, I should wait until I got a job, then I would have insurance and I could see the doctor then. And it was probably nothing anyway. Old people pee a lot... maybe I'm just getting older... When you're busy it's easy to rationalize the little problems in your health.
...until they get worse.
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