There’s a first time for everything

I remember the first time I thought I was going to throw up post-diagnosis. No. 2 had been sick. I was walking up the stairs and my legs went wobbly. I thought, OK, today’s the day I’m going to get sick. But it never happened.

Since then, all the kids have been sick, but I’ve managed to stay well. How exactly I’m not sure. And when I say sick, I don’t mean getting a cold. I mean, sacrificing to the porcelain God.

That is, until Saturday around 4 a.m. I was tossing and turning and couldn’t get comfortable. And then that feeling hit me. That oh-shit-I-think-I’m-gonna-barf feeling. Sure enough.

One of the first things I thought of, interestingly, while still crumpled on the bathroom floor, was checking my blood sugar. Standing up to get a small sip of water, I decided I didn’t feel low and that I’d be OK. And since I had just recently written an article for a major diabetes magazine (to be published in the fall!) regarding sick-day management, I knew my sugar was likely to go up, not down, when vomiting.

It was mid-morning before I called downstairs to No. 1 to bring me my meter. He came bounding upstairs with the kit all taken apart. “Mom, where does this go?” he asked holding the test strip. I really didn’t have my wits about me and frankly I’m not sure what I told him, but he figured it out. He wanted to know where to put the needle, too, but I told him there was already one in there. He stuck around while I tested (108) and then went on his way.

Several hours later, I checked again and rang in at 123. I felt pretty good about those numbers since I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. Not long after that second test, No. 1 came upstairs again and said, “Daddy said you need to eat something and check your blood sugar.” He brought me some ice water and saltines. Such a good nurse maid.

The really interesting part is that sometime yesterday when I was still chained to the bed, hardly able to turn over without inducing pain somewhere, I was thinking about that article I wrote. One of the key management points I talked about was having a sick-day tool kit. A box or bag filled with things like tissues, saltines, regular or soda, cold medicine, phone numbers for all your doctors and anything else you may need to manage your blood sugar while sick and barely able to even make it to the bathroom, much less the kitchen (which is downstairs!). I kept thinking, gee, I should have put that darn kit together…I kept thinking about it and kept saying I would do it and just didn’t get to it…you silly procrastinator…what if you had been alone today…who would have brought you saltines and ice water.