diagnosis

Taken a few days after my diagnosis with type 1 diabetes, a few months over 2 years ago.

My vision was really bad as my body was readjusting after a very dangerously high level of blood sugar was discovered by a chance visit to the doctor, because my eyes seemed infected and were bothering me. When I took this picture, looking in the bathroom mirror, I remember I had no idea what it and the others I took were going to look like. I couldn’t see the food on my plate clearly, even with reading glasses (which I had only gotten at 40, less than two years before diagnosis). Everything stayed blurry for a few weeks, till insulin treatment finally settled in.

I had been losing weight rapidly for some months before that special day that I went to see a doctor. The irony is that people were asking me all that time what was my secret, telling me that I looked good (as in, approaching the current wand-like fad that women, even women who have borne children, are expected to live up to. That being said, I have never been heavy).

Meanwhile, I was very sick, and could have gone into a coma had my condition not been caught when it was.

Diabetes is, when you aren’t missing limbs or on dialysis, an invisible condition.

The year-long period before diagnosis was an extremely difficult and horrible time. My spirit was both in rebellion and in a downward spiral, in tandem with the state of my slowly non-functioning pancreas. If I had not been diagnosed, and able to cling to something to help some part of me heal, I am not sure where I would be today.

Somehow, the potential of managing my condition has functioned like an anchor in my life. While being very conscious of the fact that if insulin treatment were not available, my life would have been shortened drastically, I am amazed and grateful that it does exist.

Perhaps I am still here because I have more to do in the world before I am gone for good.

Bring it.

Every Thursday