Tag Archives: diabetes

When Best Friends Aren’t Best Friends Any More

Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,
lilduane1
Back when things were a lot different

I’m sure my story isn’t that different from everyone else’s story. Most of us grew up with a best friend or two (over the years) and then life may or may not kept us together. If you watch a lot of the movies that get released starring the usual suspects of male friends, you get the impression that these friends stay close friends forever, basically until they reach middle age and go through their middle age crisis moments together.

Unfortunately for me, that didn’t happen. And strangely enough I kind of wish it did. Let me explain.

I’ve had two really close best friends over the years. One was my friend Roland, who I believe I met when we were both about two or three years old. We lived across the way from each other in a low-income apartment complex, and my first memory of Roland was a fight we had where both of us went home crying to our parents. Immediately after that, I remember his mom and my mom conducting some kind of UN conference where the two of us were forced to become friends again. We remained friends from that moment forward, proving that, yes, the UN sometimes DOES work.

Our friendship lasted most of our childhood. Both of us bought the same blue Schwinn bicycle and we rode miles and miles on those things together. It was not unusual for the two of us to race 26 miles down the beach to Redondo Beach, California and then back to Santa Monica. For us, the enjoyment was the journey of traveling down the bicycle trail together, back in the days when you could actually ride down those paths without running over a million girls on roller skates.

Some of my most memorable moments were with Roland, including when we would run into Dom Deluise at the local department stores and then at McDonalds shortly after. We explored the world together and learned about the world as a shared experience only friends can truly appreciate.

When I was a young teenager, my mom died after a horrible illness that slowly drained her of life. When she died in the hospital, I remember calling Roland because he was the only person I wanted to talk to. Shortly after, he showed up with his mom and dad to the hospital, making sure that I wasn’t alone on that horrible day.

Soon after, I moved in with my older sister and her husband, which forced me to move away from Santa Monica. Roland and I kept in touch by phone, and every now and then I’d figure out a way to take the bus for a few hour trip to visit him, and sometimes he’d do the same to come to me. But as we were further and further away, we sort of drifted apart until we stopped calling and then never saw each other again. It’s one of those things I regretted deeply over the years, but life takes you where life takes you.

In Moorpark, my new home, I made friends with the person who was to become my next best friend, Ken. While we didn’t have the history that Roland and I had, we quickly built a friendship and quickly made up for the lack of history by inventing all sorts of adventures together. One of my favorite moments in high school was when the two of us were taking a Spanish class, and we were the two students who had already finished alll the lower level Spanish stuff so we were kind of put into a corner by ourselves to study on our own because they didn’t have a high enough level class for us to take. Because we were always together, we made a lot of noise and had a lot of fun. So the teacher felt she had to separate us. Therefore, we did what any normal duo of friends would do: We invented a sign language that allowed us to communicate from across the room from each other. We learned it quickly and immediately really pissed off the teacher who decided she wasn’t going to win this battle, so she let us sit next to each other again and never tried to separate us again.

A few years later, after graduation, I joined the Army and Ken joined the Air Force. At one point, we were both in Germany at the same time, so I decided to hop into my Volkswagon Scirroco (sic), pick up Ken and drive the two of us to Paris, France. It was a wild, fun adventure that involved some young girl we found to help us find a hotel (because neither of us could speak French) who the hotel owner thought was a prostitute because she was negotiating the room for two American GIs (and then left with a smile right after she secured us the room, which caused the old woman working the hotel to suddenly realize she had played the wrong cards in her assumptions).

That was pretty much our last get together. Ken ended up being accepted to the Air Force Academy and is a colonel today, probably going to be a general one of these days. I wish him well, but I regret that our friendship faded and we really don’t talk any more.

Strangely enough, both Roland and Ken have connected with me through Facebook, so every now and then I see what’s going on in their lives, which when I think about it is actually kind of sad because at one time I was very close to both of them, and like that one hit wonder song “now they’re just somebody that I used to know”.

Weirdly enough, when I made contact with them on Facebook, I immediately had this feeling that I had found a long, lost friend and then things were going to be great again. And we rarely even communicate, which forces the “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe to play through in my head (which is funny because it’s probably one of the most often quoted titles of a book that people have never actually read themselves, so when they pretend to have read it, I always say “Stop Twampling!” just to see if there’s a reaction, which when there’s none I know they’re bullshitting me about having read it). Wolfe’s idea is somewhat true, and you never really understand it until the events play out that show you how true it really is. I read that book a decade or so ago, yet until I made contact with those two former friends, I never made the connection to what he was truly saying.

Things About Diabetes They Don’t Talk About

Healthcare, Memoirs, , , , , ,
Don't do it! You'll get diabetes!
Don’t do it! You’ll get diabetes!

I apologize for taking a detour on a site where I normally talk about writing, self-publishing, computer games and all things stuffed animals, but recently, I’ve been going through a bit of a struggle with my health, and it finally hit me hard enough that I thought I would dedicate a little space and talk about it.

First off, I’ve been a diabetic for a good portion of my life. Most of it is genetic, as my mother’s side of the family had the disease and both my mother and grandfather died from it. I don’t know anything about my father’s side of the line, so I’m going on limited information here. However, I did have the opportunity to see how it affected at least two of my family members, and to put it simply, it wasn’t pretty. It’s a crappy disease, and if you don’t have the ability to afford the best medication, you’re pretty much screwed. Both my mother and grandfather were poverty stricken, and that’s the greatest petri dish available for that disease to take you down.

I’m not in the same financial circumstances, so one would think I’d have access to better medication and treatments, and I have been, but I’m discovering that it’s really not that much of a benefit when it comes down to a really crappy disease. While I’m not stuck with having to inject myself with throwaway needles every day (they have what are called pen needles that use a different needle, but you use the same injector pen until it runs out. These days, not everything has to remain refrigerated, and let’s just say that with needles that are less intrusive these days, it’s a lot better today than it used to be.

However, what they don’t tell you about are some of the things that happen with this disease that’s different with each individual affected. One of my pet peeves about this disease is how many “experts” exist out there who know a fraction of the information about diabetes that I do, but somehow speak as if they’re experts in the field. These are the people who say things like “well, you can control it with diet” or they’ll point at whatever you’re eating and say “You’re a diabetic. Should you be eating that?” Unfortunately, our legal system frowns upon my desire to shove an ice pick down their throat, so let’s just say that being a diabetic means being subject to every whack a doodle wannabe doctor with two years experience of watching House on television as their “residency”. Or worse: “I know a guy that had diabetes, so let me tell you about everything I know about the disease” which usually means falsehoods and stereotypes of medical information.

But to understand the really bizarre nature of this disease, I have to give you a little history about myself, because there’s no better way to explain it than taking it from that perspective. You see, some years ago, I used to control my diabetes through diet and exercise, keeping myself in somewhat decent shape. Then my pancreas decided it didn’t want to secrete as much insulin as it was supposed to do, so I was put on oral medications that helped my pancreas produce more insulin. And then about a year ago, that stopped working, and somehow my kidneys started to shut down. I ended up in the hospital, and fortunately I didn’t end up on dialysis, but was pretty close. However, all I could remember was the nurse who kept making comments about how I was lucky that I didn’t have to go through dialysis, giving off the impression that somehow this was my fault. You know, the claims of you didn’t take care of yourself well enough, you ate badly, and your not checking your blood enough to maintain your sugar levels. Almost every conversation with her was like hearing how I would now have to be doing something different, and it was now on me to make things better. The fact that I was watching what I was eating and running/biking didn’t seem to make a difference. Again, it was all my fault.

After I got out of the hospital, they decided that the old way of maintaining my sugar levels hadn’t been working, so they put me on insulin, something I used to equate to “you’re going to die very soon after that, Duane.” I’d seen it happen with both my grandfather and my mother. Once they got put on insulin, it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart and they died. Everyone kept saying, this is 2012 (at least when they said it), and not the 1970s; medicine has come a long way. People live long, productive lives with diabetes.

Well, one of the problems of taking insulin, at least for me, is that my weight shot up big time. It’s been on an upwards trajectory that I can’t seem to stop. I’m not talking a few pounds here and there. I’m talking a trajectory that has increased my current weight to a level that my body has NEVER reached before, even in a short period after I got out of the Army and let my body go completely to waste (before wising up and getting back into physical shape). The problem is: It’s not stopping.

One of the problems that’s emerged is bloating of my limbs, which makes it so much more difficult for me to walk (and obviously, run). I have trouble putting on my shoes every morning because my feet have gotten so bloated that my shoes rarely fit, and I have to force my feet into my shoes, until my feet settle down and my shoes begin to feel a lot more comfortable for the day.

My usual response to this sort of thing has been exercise, which I attempted to do, but here’s one of those things they don’t tell you about. I just don’t have the energy. I tried going running a few weeks ago, and I didn’t make it steps before my body practically just conked out on me. So, I tried doing walking instead, and let’s just say that I’m running into some complications with that as well. Last week, I decided to walk two miles (basically taking the sidewalk around the complex where I live and down the street before coming to the back exit of where I live). On Monday, it was tough, but at the end of it, I felt pretty good. Exhausted, but good. I gave it a few days and then decided to go for the same walk on Friday. I made it about 1/3 of the way before I hit a wall that I’d never experienced before. I couldn’t walk another step. I realized I wasn’t going to make the trip, so I tried to turn back around and walk home. In only a few steps, I felt like I was drunk on a night full of tequila, except I wasn’t getting the enjoyable feeling you get when you’re drunk on tequila. I just couldn’t walk straight. I’d go a few feet and start to fall down.

I made it back to the housing complex, but still had about half a mile to go to my apartment. I couldn’t move. I fell down on the grass and just laid there. After some time, a nice woman in a truck drove by and asked if I was drunk. I tried to explain what happened, which was probably a lot like some drunk trying to explain the preamble to the Constitution. After awhile, she probably figured I wasn’t some guy she had to fear, as I couldn’t even stand up, so she drove me home. I stumbled up my stairs and then into my apartment, collapsing on my couch, waking up early Saturday morning around 1:30 in the morning.

My solution to this sort of problem exists already in my apartment. I bought a treadmill some months back and have used it a couple of times. If I used it regularly, I wouldn’t even have to leave the house. But it appears I bought the one brand of treadmill designed by Loki because even on the manual mode, I’ll walk for about two minutes or so and then suddenly it will start to speed up. In seconds, it will be at a speed so fast that I can’t even keep up. Again, this is MANUAL mode. Then it might slow down to a point that is like watching a slow motion runner going even slower than physically possible. Again, another one of those frustrating things that could have been such a great solution.

But back to diabetes. The worst problem is that I have two doctors I see who don’t seem to care. Oh, they care, but they care about things that are relevant to other issues. Like, they care about my blood sugars. As long as they’re normal, they seem to think we’re on the right track. Sure, my blood sugars are normal, but I’m not. My blood sugar is great, but my body is falling completely apart. At this rate, I suspect I won’t survive the year. That’s not hyperbole; that’s rationalization. I’ve always been somewhat of a rational kind of guy.

But that’s my tale of diabetes I wanted to share with you. I figure most people have read the first lines of this article and just went onto the next one, and I understand. Unfortunately, I can’t move on; I’m sort of stuck here.

Strangely enough, everyone but me is an expert on diabetes

Education, Healthcare, , , , ,

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know about my whole adventure with being a diabetic. For a number of years, I lived on the edge of the problem by actually going out of my way to change my lifestyle so that what I ate was copacetic with what I needed. I completely changed my eating habits to compensate for this, and as a result, I’ve had to be very careful about what I put into my body.

Having said that, no matter how much work you do at this sort of thing, there are so-called “experts” all around me who are convinced that because they saw a TV show once, knew some guy, or just happened to hear something on the news once, they know more than someone who lives through it on a day to day basis. When I first started dealing with the problem, one of the first things I did was switch from regular soda to diet soda (or pop). This started the “you know that diet soda is just as bad as regular soda, right?” commentaries. Those ranged from the totally stupid people (“just because it’s diet doesn’t mean it doesn’t have calories”) to the New Age stupid (“the chemicals in diet soda are worse for you than if you were just imbibing regular cubes of sugar”). And there’s no shutting them up either. Go to the fridge to grab a diet soda, and you’re guaranteed a five minute screed on all things bad about diet soda. Tell them to stop lecturing you, and they do it anyway, because they’re convinced they’re doing it “for your own good”. One day, I was actually lectured by a woman who felt that diet soda would one day kill me. She would have continued the lecture, but she had to take a break and go outside because it had been fifteen minutes since she last had a cigarette.

I went to work out a few weeks ago, and someone told me that my choice of exercises (the exercise bike) was a poor choice for someone with diabetes because it didn’t affect the cardiovascular system as well as some other exercise he named. The fact that I went from sitting in front of the television set to actually working out should have been an indication that criticism wasn’t necessary, but strangely enough that fact had little sway or influence.

The other day, I was in the cafeteria choosing EXACTLY the same thing I eat every day in order to constantly maintain the correct blood sugar. Someone who knew I had just come out of the hospital felt it necessary to criticize me over my choice of lunch food. I know the person meant well, but just once I wish people would just shut the fuck up and leave me alone. I choose what I eat because a) it appeals to me, and b) it works. I don’t want to hear about tofu, soy milk products, modified starches or whatever. It’s bad enough I have to change anything in my life because doctors inform me of what I should or should not do. Having some clueless wannabe interject with naive information is really annoying.

Hospitalization, Changing One’s Ways and How People Still Can’t Communicate

Education, Healthcare, , , , , , ,

I’ve been debating about writing this topic for a few days now, but I guess enough time has finally passed that it’s possible to at least try to deal with it.

I’m in the hospital today. It’s my fifth day, and the doctors still can’t make a decision on when I might get out. My life kind of hangs on the balance of some numbers on a blood test that gets drawn three times a day, and while it appears to be getting better, it’s not “out of the woods” yet, so no one will even conjecture at the possibilities of me ever leaving this place.

Some explanation is probably necessary. I am a diabetic. I have been one most of my adult life. Normally, I’ve maintained it by diet, exercise, a combination of pills and sacrifices to the Goddess Shania Twain. Over the years, my diet has wavered (not always for the best), exercising became easy to chalk up to “probably tomorrow…” and then “probably next week….”, although The Shania has never had a lack of constant attention and appropriate worship.

One of the drugs introduced into my regiment for dealing with this condition turned out to be a lot more toxic to me than it should have been (or so their theory is…can’t really nail the specialists down on what happened, or is happening, but that’s kind of the premise of the voices that are coming down from their mountain), and it managed to inflame my pancreas and turn off my kidney (or something like that). My first realization of something being wrong was waking up in the middle of the night and finding myself completely disoriented in my own room, unable to figure out how to get into the kitchen (where instinctively I realized I needed something to eat). For two hours, I was stuck in my bedroom because I could neither stand up and would come crashing down very fast every time I tried, nor could I turn the door handle of my bedroom door because in my state it was completely beyond me. After two hours, and breaking down my closet door by accident, thinking it was my bedroom door, I managed to open the door and then spent another fifteen minutes trying to crawl across the floor of my living room to my kitchen. Then I found myself completely unable to open the refrigerator (you know those super-security refrigerators that consist of a door that requires you to just tug on it softly to open it? Yeah, one of those). After awhile, I was able to grab a car of apple juice by flinging my hands at it and throwing it to the ground. Then I drank it down in little guilty sips. 15 minutes later, I started to return to normal again.

Apparently, that kind of alerted the medical community that Duane needed some assistance, and here I am at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

One thing I was always adamant about was that if I ever reached a point where I was forced to have to start taking insulin (instead of pills), most people who know me should expect to read of my untimely demise not soon after. I’ve watched too many people get devastated by this disease, and I always swore that I wouldn’t go down that road. Strange. Now, I’m on it. But that’s a subject for later, obviously.

The thing that’s kind of bugging me right now is this medical establishment behavior of always expecting the patient is going to just buy into the ethical commication “care” response system because they live in it every day. Let me give you an example. One thing I abhor more than anything is pricking my fingers with these little needle devices to check blood sugar. It doesn’t hurt that much. It’s not even that messy. But it’s MY FINGERS. I’m a writer who HATES to do anything to my fingers in this way, and even as I write this blog right now, I am reminded with each and every letter I type that something other than my creative thinking is driving my thought process right now. And it continues to hurt a long time. My whole right hand right now has been pricked so many freaking times that I lost count several days ago. By the time I finish this post, someone will come in demanding that either they prick me, or I do the “brave” thing and prick myself.

Which is the other side of that issue that I wanted to discuss (by the way, someone just came in to prick my finger and has now moved on his way). The main nurse who has been working with me since I’ve been here has adopted a communication schema that has been driving me nuts. For those wondering what I’m talking about, a communication schema is a shortcut set of comments and statements that someone uses to deal with specific situations because a previous encounter using those same schema resulted in positive results. Think of it as a lion hunter who continues to run away from the lion until he picks up a chair and waves it at the lion, causing the lion to back off. Suddenly, he has a tool he can use to make sure that the lion doesn’t eat him. Okay, stupid example, but you probably get the idea.

This nurse, in order to get me to want to prick my fingers, keeps using the same schema of “It’s a horrible disease. It doesn’t care who you are. It’s unfeeling.” And if that doesn’t work, he ramps it up to:  “If not treated, you’ll end up having to come back here under the following circumstances: (fill in gruesome details).”

The problem with schema is that it has to pertain to the individual who it is being used on. If I was some young kid who thought that I could just continue living my life in a wild fashion, and I just wasn’t thinking about the ramifications of such things, his schema works really well. It would make me think. However, that’s not me. Consider what I said earlier. I said that if I ever ended up in this situation, there’s a pretty good chance I’d not be alive much longer. This means that I’m not thinking Bad Outcome From Disease vs. Not Doing Anything but my mathematics of a cost benefit analysis wavers the premise of Not Being Alive vs. Having to Deal With all the Shit. In that context, a reconstituted schema that pertains to the wrong emotions is probably not the one to be focused upon.

I understand the need to preach caring about certain things to people, but you have to at least appeal to the same contextual algorithms that drive each individual’s needs.

The truly sad thing is: I’ve been stuck in the hospital for about five days so I’ve been unable to do anything I enjoy doing. Hopefully, this will end soon and we can see where things go from here.