Fragments from a Writing Desk: 23 November 2000, on Bench up the Slope, with Stra...

Fragments from a Writing Desk: 23 November 2000, on Bench up the Slope, with Stra...: A picture of exhaustion. At 65, this week in 2000, the question was whether (while enduring surgeries and postponing others) I could revise...

Fragments from a Writing Desk: Hershel Parker and Heddy-Ann Richter

Fragments from a Writing Desk: Hershel Parker and Heddy-Ann Richter

It's been a while, and not a great one. . .

DH is in massive denial of his diabetes.  I honestly don't know when he last tested his blood sugar.  He eats like there is no tomorrow.  He has regained all of the weight he lost when first diagnosed (and probably more) and is acting mentally unstable, to boot.

I have had what seems like one health issue after another since about Thanksgiving (heck, I'm in my 60's - I'm entitled  to have aches and pains and issues from time to time, aren't I???) DH keeps hinting - not quite saying outright - that having to "take care of" me is what is putting HIM on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

But he is doing stupid things that cause him problems, and I am not responsible for these things!  For example, when he drives, he gets very paranoid (worse, if he is especially tired or stressed-out) - every other driver on the road is OUT TO GET HIM!!!  If he starts acting belligerent toward another driver (one whom he imagines has "done something" to him but probably isn't even aware of it) I have to hope and pray that the other driver doesn't get belligerent back, because things could escalate in a hurry.

And he is way behind in a lot of stuff at work.  He could bring some of it home and let me help him get it up to date - I have offered - but he won't do that.  I have also suggested that he hang a "Do Not Interrupt" sign on his door at work and get some of the stuff done (he could get away with this) but he won't do that, either.

Because he has suggested that MY health issues are a large part of what is getting him upset, I have to "fake it" and pretend that I'm feeling hunky-dory, even when I'm not.  I'm older than he is - can't help that - he knew it when we got married - and I definitely have my creaky days.  But I don't dare show how creaky I feel because it makes him feel like there's just that much more burden HE has to carry.

I don't really know how to deal with all of this.  I think he has a meeting with his diabetes nurse sometime this month, and she is going to go through the roof (which will REALLY make him fun to live with for the next several days. . .)

Any suggestions would be welcome.

He's Mortal After All - What a Bummer!

After deciding that he wasn't really diabetic and indulging himself to several days of tons of mashed potatoes, pasta, sugary soft drinks, etc, he finally got consecutive blood glucose readings of 138 and 139.  That's high, for him.  So it was back to earth again.  Now he knows he can't just eat whatever he wants, in whatever amount he wants.  But I think he realizes too that with just a few tweaks of his behavior, he can keep this nasty stuff in check, so maybe it wasn't such a bad lesson.

So hubby isn't diabetic any more. . .

He had a one-on-one meeting with a "diabetes educator" and I'm so sorry I missed it.  I had a killer headache and just about any attempt to move would make me throw up, so I couldn't go.

He showed her his record of glucometer readings - all but one within the normal range.  The one that was high wasn't off by much.  And he has NOT been at all faithful with the dieting.  So he asked her, flat out:  "If I haven't been staying on the diet and my blood sugars have remained within the normal range, then how can I be diabetic?"  She replied archly, "Oh, you're diabetic, all right!"  He reworded the question several ways - the numbers all say NORMAL, despite eating anything that didn't bite back - so how does this back up the diagnosis.  She would never come back with a concrete answer, but she continued to insist that he is a diabetic.

It probably was a good thing I wasn't there.  I would have been in her face with the same question.  If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, why do you persist in calling it a kitty-cat???

He takes no medicine, doesn't stay on the diet, and yet continues to have normal blood sugars.  So how, exactly, is the diagnosis of "diabetic" appropriate??

His highest-ever recorded blood sugar level, taken months ago, was 141.  It has never been anywhere near that high since that one time.  He is overweight, but has lost about 1/4 of what he needs to lose.  He is exercising often. Diabetes runs in his family, so I can see that it is a definite possibility.  But the circumstances seem to have changed.  What am I not seeing here???

Do Glucometers Keep Your Whole History?

I mean, stuff like how often you checked your blood levels, what dates, what times,  and not just the readings themselves?  I'm wondering if a diabetes counselor who has the meter-reading gizmo can determine all this, and see for herself/himself when hubby has had periods when he decides not to be diabetic any more and quits playing nice.

If there is such a thing, boy - will there ever be a day of reckoning!  I'm not sure I want to be there when it happens.

But as several people have pointed out, we are not their mothers or their jailers.

So my husband informs me this morning. . .

he has a busy day ahead, no time for breakfast. . .and he may not get around to lunch, which means around three-thirty-to four, the Great All- American Pig-Out commences, and will go on until further notice.

We DID the diabetic thing LAST week, with blood sticks and counting carbs and all that, and now he's tired of it.

Should I call the AMA and tell them that these days, people are only diabetic when they FEEL like being diabetic???

News to me, but hey - I'm still just a rookie.  Can you tell I'm just a wee bit perturbed?