Tuesday, August 14, 2007

There are two sides to everything

Was it really a month? A month or a little over a month since I've written here? Oh well, time flies, especially if it's summer time. Lots have happened over such a short period of time that I found it difficult to choose the subject to write about and was postponing my comeback to the blog world :)

From the pleasant days of last month:

My sister came to visit and we spent a wonderful week together in the Hague and another even more marvelous week in Spain enjoying the sun and the sea. almost purring from pleasure spending whole time on the beach. Doing nothing but swimming, laying on the beach, reading, walking, eating, drinking sangria and basically relaxing reflected extremely good on my sugars. For the whole trip my insulin daily totals decreased by at least 40%! I felt terrific! Vacation - goooood!!!

I had a couple of my first funny pump related encounters at the airports. In Schiphol at the customs:

-"Could you please remove your cell phone from your jeans pocket?"

-"Sorry, I can't. It's not a cell phone, it's a direct line with my pancreas, it must stay open at all times."

At the Palma airport in Spain after beeping at the metal detector.

-"Could you please step over here?" a guy with a hand metal detecting thingy ready to make an extra check and then spotting a clip on my jeans pocket reading "Medtronic MiniMed" (I wear my pump inside the pocket so only the clip is visible). The guard's next question:

-"Diabetica?" Me:

-"Yes" The guard gesturing me to go further without checking me:

-"You can go."

I was a bit surprised at such a knowledgeable reaction after countless times explaining to many people that what I have clipped to my pocket is not a mobile or an mp3.

I'm learning more and more about the pump and it's going really good with it. I love my little blue gadget more and more every day. I've just started to get to know the amazing bolus wizard and there's still some negotiations needed in order to convince it to cooperate but apparently life can be so much easier.

From the not so pleasant days of last month:

My vision suddenly decreased enormously without any obvious reason. One day I just started to see less and less and at some point wasn't even able to read anything from anywhere unless the letters were the size of the billboards' ones.

I've had the retinopathy for the last 2 years already (I totally don't believe those people who say they have diabetes for over 30 years and no complications; they should recheck if they have diabetes in the first place). But so far it was not major and some laser treatment twice a year was doing the trick.

But apparently besides the diabetes I have some other factors effecting my vision (I'm not going to bore you with medical details), which in combination with the diabetes make a deadly serious partnership making me see only 20% with my left eye and 40% with my right eye, which is 50% in total against all the mathematical laws.

That would be half the tragedy for a person without diabetes as there is a surgery available for such a condition, which might help to improve the vision by about 30% but, and of course there is a but, the surgery is not allowed for people with diabetes on account that there is a chance of complete blindness. Is this nightmare ever going to end?

I can't help but think if I'm only 25 now, what's going to be when I'm 35? 45? 55? am I even going to live till then?

Sorry to be coming back with rather negative thoughts, although they are not negative at all, it's only human to be scared, right?