I Got the Diabeetus.

So, it's been awhile, right? But boy have I got a story to tell. I know, who doesn't this year, right? Mine starts around Valentine's Day, when I started feeling kind of funky. I was constantly tired. My muscles ached. I'd get numbness in my hands and feet. I was always thirsty and peeing constantly.  I would get ravishingly hungry, but then be tired of eating after two or three bites. I couldn't even make my way through a PB&J. This went on throughout the month of February, a month in which I lost 30lbs. My wife would come home from work to find me in the dark, under a blanket on the couch, fast asleep almost every night. We knew there was something wrong with me, but, without insurance, we hoped we could just go the home remedy route for whatever it was.

So we treated the symptoms. Gatorades for the constant thirst and frequent urination. Protein shakes to combat the hunger but inability to eat, and also the way too rapid weight loss. Of course, this was a mistake, as we'd come to find out, given the sugar and carb content of these things, but we'll get there.

Things started getting really bad as March started. The first Friday in March, March 6th, my heterosexual lifemate was having a karaoke party for his 40th birthday. I was excited, but also nervous as hell given how I was feeling. I got up to shower and get myself ready for the party, and could barely make it through the shower. I felt like I couldn't breathe. My back hurt. I had to finally give in; I called my wife and told her she needed to come home, I needed to go to the ER.

I went to the ER, got checked in, got all kinds of tests, the whole thing, and by later that night I was out of the ER... and into the ICU, where the nurses told me I had one of the worst cases of diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, that they had ever seen. They were surprised I hadn't slipped into a diabetic coma. My blood sugar on admittance was 700, and I had an A1C of over 12. So clearly I was diabetic, and the home remedies we tried didn't help any. I spent two days in the ICU, getting my blood sugar taken hourly, getting various insulin doses hourly, going through IV after IV of fluids for extreme dehydration, getting a phosphorous drip. It was hell. I spent the nights alone, face to face with my mortality for the first time. Which sounds extreme, I know, but that's how sick I was. It was close.

So after two days in the ICU, I was moved to the general hospital floor for another two days of insulin and multiple meetings with a diabetic coordinator and a nutritionist. By the third day, I was feeling immensely better. I had an appetite. I was no longer peeing every two hours. I wasn't exhausted. I finally went home Tuesday afternoon with my blood sugar around 200 and a list of medications I could barely keep track of... two different insulins, a diabetes pill, a cholesterol pill... and an overwhelming schedule of when to take them. I had also gained back 14lbs while in the hospital. The food there clearly wasn't that bad.

Now, the adjustment began. New diet. New medication regiment. I was taking 35 units of a daily insulin once a day, and 12 units of a pre-meal insulin three times a day and possibly a fourth time before bedtime if needed. I'm not going to lie and say it was easy; there was tears, hunger, depression, guilt. Even though they said it wasn't, it felt like a death sentence. The first month was hell. 

But it got better. I got used to the new diet, and begin to figure out what I could and couldn't eat without spiking my blood sugar. I even figured out how to still have dessert. And my body recovered. My insulin doses started lessening. After just two weeks the pre-meal insulin went from 12 units to 6 units, and after two months got changed to just as needed, and I've never needed it. The daily insulin went from 35 units to 30 units, to 20 units, to 10 units, to just last week being taken off of it completely. Through it all, my blood sugar has been fine. It rose a little, but still well within normal, safe limits. And what's really made all this possible has been the weight loss. Around my birthday in January, I was 250lbs. Not six weeks later when I went into the ER, I had dropped to 220lbs. When I came out of the hospital, I was back up to 234lbs. Today? I'm at 205lbs, a weight I haven't seen in eight years, at least. Now don't get me wrong, I still have bad days; because of just how screwed up I was, I have side effects I'll never fully be rid of. But overall, I feel healthier than I have in a long, long time.

Of course, things aren't all great. I left the hospital with a flock of bills that totaled over $85K. Since I'm a self-payer, the hospital dialed a lot of that back, but I still have almost $15K in debt to pay off from this, and that's not counting the frequent clinic follow-ups and medications. And this all happened a week before the world went to hell and took the job market with it. Combine that with being in a high-risk group for Covid no matter how well I'm doing, and it's made finding a decent job impossible because I'm limited to remote work only, which has not been easy to find. Things are tight. They're good, but they're tight. That's why you might see if you look to the right of the page a new little widget that says "Support me on ko-fi," because I could use some support. That's all I'll say about that.

I'm hoping to make this a fresh start, a return to blogging. I've got a few fun ideas for posts coming up, a few serious ones as well. And probably some health-related ones as time goes on as well. Hopefully you'll join me for the ride.