As I type these very words, I am eating a salad for lunch (it helps to have an extra appendage...oh, and an extra arm, too). Over the past two weeks I have eaten numerous salads. I figure I'll be eating even more in the days, weeks, months, and--God willing--years ahead.
Two weeks ago I went in for a regularly-scheduled doctor's appointment and found out my hemoglobin numbers were out of whack (that's a medical term). I have flirted with Type 2 diabetes since high school. They were minor flirtations: A note back and forth, the failed promise of a date or two, some furtive fumblings in the backseat of a 1986 Oldsmobile. But now I find we are intricately entwined, dating as it were. And I don't like the evil bitch one bit.
I'm not on insulin. I have added a second oral medication to my arsenal of daily pills (okay, six, plus a vitamin twice a day...a gummy vitamin, in fact; the world would be a much better place if all medications came in gummy form, trust me on this). My doctor gave me his version of a "Come to Jesus" talk about how serious this was, what my future may hold, and maybe I should get used to the fact that I'm getting older and this might be the natural progression of the disease. In other words, that quiet girl in the corner of my pancreas was becoming more vocal and aggressive.
I admit that a lot of this is due to my crappy eating habits. I have gotten into a rut of fast food, sweet snacks, and easy enticements, and that is my main problem. When I was first put on an oral medication for my diabetes, it worked really well. TOO well. It seemed like I could cheat all I wanted and go for a blood test every 3 months and see that I was still within my threshold for good testing results. No more.
So here I sit eating another salad. All the bad things I relied on are gone now. Those new Snickers Peanut Butter Squares which I adored, have become a chaste and distant romance, admired from afar but not unwrapped. Honey Nut Cheerios have become just plain ol' Cheerios, begrudgingly at least, even though the diabetes nurse/therapist I visited on Monday told me to try a nice Kashi cereal, to which I replied, "I'd rather cut up the box and put milk on it." Actually that visit was very good. I was taught the proper way to poke myself (it's not as fun as it sounds, trust me) to draw blood so I can monitor my glucose levels.
And so far, my numbers are good--a little high in the afternoon--but good nonetheless. I'm walking more--or trying to--but one of the things about my new diabetes drug is to stay out of the sun, so that hampers it a bit. We've had some cool, cloudy Sundays, and the past two I've walked 2.8 miles and 2.7 miles respectively. Not long distances by any stretch of the imagination, but long for me.
So life is changing a bit, decidedly for the better. I have a bit more energy and I feel more like myself. I also seem to be in a better mood, but that could change any minute, as quickly as the ocean that borders downtown San Diego. You've been forewarned.
This is why I decided against sending you a can of my Christmas cookies this past year. I've done a lot of diabetic cooking for one of Joe's family members (Uncle Stan) and two poodles (Pooftah & Foukaire). Everyone is deceased now, but not because of me. Uncle Stan lived well into his 80's and both doodles lived to be over 16 (and I gave them insulin shots twice a day).
If you are ever interested in recipes... you know where to find me, and it is not in the backseat of an Oldsmobile... unless you still have the car!!!
Posted by: Kitchen Encounters | April 28, 2011 at 03:10 PM