SWEETS FOR MY SWEET (Short story/fiction/romance)

 “Max! Where have you got to this time?”

Harry could only just hear himself above the crash and rumble of the waves below and the breeze buffeting and flattening the grass on the cliff top. It was chillier than last time he had been here, but at least the rain the weatherman had forecast had stayed away. Max was nowhere to be seen, as usual.

The trouble was, thought Harry, Max always followed his nose. He seemed to remember every winding path through the thrift and samphire above the little seaside town where he had holidayed every summer of his life with Harry and Maureen. Now he was eager to revisit them all again, haring back every so often to sniff the air and lick Harry’s hand apologetically before lolloping back to pick up all the private messages other doggy friends had left for him over the two years he’d been away.

When Max was a puppy, Maureen used to bring tasty liver treats in the pockets of her mauve fleece jacket to tempt him back from the exciting adventures he was enjoying down in the gulleys and caves along the shoreline. He could always find something more interesting to do than come running back to his master’s voice.

“Harry, you old duffer, Max knows you don’t mean it!” Maureen would say. “I bought you that ultrasonic whistle but you always forget to pack it! Lucky I remembered his favourite snacks. His tummy always wins in the end!”

Maureen was right. Max would always come bounding back up even the steepest path when treats were on offer, panting and smiling to get his reward. For that moment, he forgot about the special smelly seaweed and whatever the gulls had left on the rocks. Sometimes he brought some of that back on his nose or his paws but Maureen always had a packet of those wet wipers to clean him up again.

“We can’t go back to the guest house with all that flotsam and jetsam on us, can we, Max?” she’d say.

Harry chuckled as he remembered how she had used the wipes to tackle a huge blob of rum and raisin ice cream on the back of his own jacket. He’d blamed that on the gulls, too, until Maureen poked him and said:

“Harry! It’s not the gulls. You’ve only gone and sat on your cornet!”

They’d had a fit of the giggles, then, just like they’d always done together since they were teenagers. They shared the same sense of humour. That’s what made Harry notice Maureen at the dance all those years ago; her sparkly eyes and the way she got his jokes and made even funnier ones of her own that made him howl with laughter.

Harry blinked, disappointed with himself.

“Silly soft old sausage,” Maureen would have said. It was no good keep dwelling on those last precious few months over that awful winter and getting upset.

“You need a holiday, dad. It’s no good moping about again in the house all summer. Anyway, you and Max will have lots of lovely walks on the promenade and then there’s the crazy golf and the café that looks out onto the seafront. I’ll phone Mrs Archer for you, if you like.”

Kathy was right, just as grown up daughters seem to have an annoying knack of being. She was a lot like her Mum, too, practical and sensible where Harry often seemed in a muddle and a dream.

“I’ll do it myself, love. Max needs the exercise, the great hairy lump, now he’s an old dog.” But when Harry booked himself into the pet-friendly guest house where he and Maureen had always stayed, he was determined not to avoid their familiar well-loved walks. Where was the fun staying on the flat bits? That was for old codgers! Even when the doctor told him he had diabetes just after he retired, Harry was determined everything would be just the same. His own dad had “had sugar” as they used to say back then, and Dad had carried on regardless till the day he died.

“Mr. Collinson,” his new young consultant had said more recently, “now your pancreas isn’t working quite as it should, it’s important you get some gentle exercise to help the insulin to do its work; just remember always to carry something sugary with you in case your blood glucose drops too low.”

Harry had been hopeless at timing the injections at first, when they told him tablets were no longer enough to control his diabetes. Sometimes he would go a bit wobbly and sweaty and Maureen was always the first to notice.

“Do you need a sugar tablet, Harry? I think you do; you’re getting a bit argumentative and wibbly wobbly, you know.”

Sure enough, Maureen would fish out the packet of special glucose tablets from her pocket or her posh handbag if they were at a dinner dance or a café, and Harry would soon feel better and raring to go again.

“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t nailed on with glue,” she joked. “Lucky I remembered to bring the spare packet with me.”

Harry heard Max’s barking coming up from the path that descended steeply to the shingle strand where the limestone caverns dotted the coast like a doggy paradise. At least he hadn’t fallen in a rock pool, but what if he was stuck on a ledge? Harry imagined the big yellow rescue helicopter whirring overhead and the photos in the local rag showing a soppy old Golden Retriever with a silly smile on its face getting winched to safety with the locals and holidaymakers whooping and applauding.

Harry had always tried to keep himself as fit as he could. A few years ago he could have shimmied down there and been the hero himself.

“You’re always my hero, you old softy,” he could hear Maureen saying.

Harry felt in his pocket. His fingers closed on the neat embossed tin with ‘Best Dad in the World’ on the lid. Kathy had bought it for him as a holiday present to keep three whole packets of glucose in. It felt very light. Then he remembered putting the packets on the bedside table ready to pack into the tin in the morning. They must still be sitting there, along with the wet wipes he was going to put in his pockets for the usual little mishaps Maureen always dealt with so sensibly.

“Max! Come on up! Time to go for walkies back to the cottage!”

Shouting made Harry realise his voice was going a bit funny as though his cheek muscles and his tongue were made of rubber and when he looked where the gulls were wheeling over the sea, they were mixed up with little swirling spots and squiggles like bits of burning paper blowing up from a bonfire. He was starting to feel quite weak and shaky and although the wind was cool and bracing on the cliff, he was getting so sticky hot he felt he wanted to peel off his jacket and sit down on the ground.

As though he was a million miles away, he could still hear Max barking above the sound of the waves that seemed muffled, somehow, as though his ears were full of singing cotton wool.

The familiar woofing started getting nearer and nearer.

“Good boy, Max. I’ll be up in a minute, I’m just having a little lie down,” Harry heard his own voice saying, as if he was a stranger with detachable lips. He couldn’t remember actually laying down, but his body had taken over somehow, trying to conserve his energy for fight or flight. He had never ever let his blood sugar get so low before, or rather Maureen hadn’t. She always saw the signs long before anybody else even noticed, including Harry himself, and brought out the sugary lifesavers.

Then something warm and wet was tickling his hand where it lay palm down on the prickly grass that felt like little spiky tufts of that artificial stuff greengrocers used on their stalls. His brain was whizzing round trying to make sense but he felt so weak he could only think of giggly silly things as if he was drunk. He hadn’t been drunk more than once in his life when he was just a tiny bit tipsy at a neighbour’s wedding as a very young man. After he met Maureen he never bothered with more than a glass of shandy, so how did he know this felt like being drunk? He remembered then the glossy leaflet the nurse at the Diabetes Centre had shown him describing the symptoms of a ‘hypo’ attack when your blood glucose is too low.

“Be careful as people can sometimes mistake a hypo for being drunk,” the leaflet had spelled out in large underlined capitals.

What if somebody found him like this and called for the police? The tickling got even more slobbery on the back of his hand and he could hear a woman’s voice, now, close by, though his eyes wouldn’t seem to open to let him say hello.

“Are you alright there?” The owner of the voice was kneeling by Harry’s head. “Well, obviously not. Are you diabetic, by any chance?”

Harry managed to nod, but he wasn’t sure which way was up and down, so his head ended up flopping around in a way he hadn’t quite planned, but he did manage to tell the lady his name.

“Alright now, Harry, you’d better have some of these jelly sweets,” the lady attached to the voice was saying, very gently but matter-of-fact. “First we’d better see if you can sit up and swallow properly or I’ll have to call for an ambulance to get you off to A&E. Thank goodness I have this terribly sweet tooth and I carry a big bag of jellies with me whenever I go for a walk. I’ve just been exploring those caves. I felt rather like a smuggler! My grandson calls me Dora the Explorer. Cheeky monkey.”

The voice went on saying soothing, funny things that kept Harry chuckling and concentrating. She helped him sit up and as soon as she was sure he could manage them without choking, she fed Harry some of her jellies. At first his mouth was so numb he couldn’t taste anything but soon the different fruit flavours came through. Gradually, he began to feel much better and they sat at the side of the footpath, with Max trying to sit between them, begging for a sweet of his own by putting his paw on Dora’s wrist.

“Quite an intelligent dog, aren’t you, Mr Max?” said Dora as the three of them made their way back along the cliff top path.

“If he was clever he wouldn’t keep going AWOL and leaving his lord and master stranded miles from nowhere,” joked Harry, “but he’s sharp enough to know which side his bread’s buttered when he wants something.”

They both laughed as Max nuzzled his nose into Dora’s pocket.

“He knows which side pocket the sweets are in, you mean,” she chortled. Harry found himself rather taken by Dora’s laugh.

“How did you know I was a diabetic?” Harry was suddenly curious. Dora smiled.

“I’m a retired nurse. Endocrinology was my specialism so I’ve worked in a lot of diabetic clinics in my time. I used to come to the little fishing village in the next cove every year with my husband Stan. When he passed away I decided I just couldn’t face the same old same old. I started coming here when I needed a break. I love walking the cliff and exploring the caves. Usually I have the place to myself but today Max kept running up and barking at me. I realised he must have somebody waiting with a lead somewhere so in the end, when he wouldn’t be shooed away, I thought I’d better climb back up here in case he got lost or stranded when the tide came in. Dog’s know, you know.”

“Max knows when he’s onto a good thing, that’s for certain,” Harry smiled as Max managed to tweak a jelly out of Dora’s pocket when she wasn’t looking.

“I mean some dogs know when their owner’s in trouble; sort of a sixth doggy sense. You can train some dogs to alert people when they start going hypo, or get help if they are prone to seizures.”

Harry grinned and patted Max’s head.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, eh, Maxy?”

But he wasn’t so sure about that any more.

A few summers later, after endless emails and long phone calls and meetings in country pubs with Max in tow, Harry and Dora were walking on the cliffs again. They stood for a moment, close to each other, in the special place where Harry had had his little lie down, as they always called it, just listening to the seabirds squealing and crying as they rode the air currents over the ocean.

A dog was barking somewhere on the beach. They could hear its owner calling it and whistling for all he was worth. Dora squeezed Harry’s hand tenderly the way she did when words weren’t quite enough. They thought of Max, always running on ahead, nose quivering towards hidden horizons, but always coming back when Dora rattled the liver treats that she kept in her pocket next to Harry’s special sweets.

SWEET HONEY FROM THE COMB

I'm rather excited this morning!

My very first jar of raw unpasteurised golden honey from British bees has just been delivered to my door!

I avoid all sorts of sugar as a rule, but I still sometimes make dairy-free, gluten-free cake with 85% chocolate icing, using cocoa, coconut flour, ground almond and coconut oil, sweetened with honey so I can satisfy my inner chocoholic (and a growing number of friends who are eager to get their fix too!) with a treat from time to time that has almost no impact on my blood sugar or any worsening of neurological symptoms.

Mass-produced commercially pasteurised "funny" honey, found in squeezy bottles and convenience stores, which I currently use in my baking, is a far cry from raw honey fresh from the hive like this. Supermarket-bought processed honeys are too often adulterated with corn syrup and manufacturers sometimes allow abusive unethical treatment of the bees who labour to make the trickle of real honey that's in there!

So I've taken the plunge and sent for this raw honey, straight from the beekeeper. 

I'm even more excited now I've tried it! 

I've tasted nothing like this since I was a child!

Full of flavour, dripping with living beneficial enzymes like digestion-supportive amylase, natural vitamins, shot through with bee pollen, propolis and honeycomb. Anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and all the precious life-enhancing golden goodness humanity has celebrated for thousands of years. Now more than ever, with bees under threat worldwide, I'm keen to embrace honey from happy, healthy, protected bees.

Raw honey has 82 g of nutritious carbohydrate for every 100 g weight, for all of us diabetic carb counters and insulin pumpers. There is some encouraging evidence that raw honey is beneficial to support health, including for diabetics, when consumed judiciously in small amounts, in terms of blood glucose control and lowered cholesterol. Of course, it's possible for studies to be biased, so we have to use our brains and experience to find out what's right for us!

You can read the bit in italics below after the asterisk (*) if you're interested in why I'm changing the way I eat and my personal food journey. If not, I'll just end here by saying that on flavour and service alone, I can highly recommend this honey from Local Honey Man (other raw honey is available!)

*I'm no health evangelist. That's why this bit's just added here out of interest for anybody who wants to know. I'm not recommending my food choices to anyone else, or suggesting my diet has in any way "cured" my lifelong autoimmune conditions. The improvements I've noticed in myself this past year are incomplete, but enough to persuade me to continue to eat in a way that supports my own health. Each person has to find out what's best for them, as we all do.

I'm fortunate that I shop and cook mainly for myself and my elderly mum, who has also seen improvements in IBS symptoms, heartburn and reduction of a constant cough from mucus overproduction. I don't have the additional concern of catering for other tastes within the family circle as many do, or coping with limited choices in work canteens. I rarely eat out, so this is achievable for me, even on a very limited budget.

Sick of 33 years of less-than-optimum type 1 diabetes control, even while following the traditional NHS party line advice on nutrition, carb counting, insulin pumping etc and even sicker of horribly disabling symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E. aka CFS) for which I get no treatment from the establishment after their earlier intervention with CBT/GET at one of their UK 'fatigue clinics' which ended up making me much worse, I decided to make changes to my already low-GI, low-carb eating pattern.

So, for over a year now, I've been eating a delicious, varied diet free from eggs (which I can get away with eating if very well cooked or in baked goods, but not otherwise), dairy-free (cow's milk makes my stomach ache for hours afterwards these days), gluten-free (saying goodbye to other digestive woes!), nightshade-free (white potatoes, peppers, tomatoes) and avoiding other foods like onions and garlic that stimulate my already compromised central nervous system. 

Alcohol, too, along with most stimulants and opiate-based medicines, isn't well-tolerated by my hyper-reactive damaged CNS. No fun in that! Instead I drink home-brewed Kefir as a natural pro-biotic (usually in the form of delicious ginger beer!). Raw honey with all its natural benefits as nature's sweetener is the latest addition to my pantry!

There is ongoing research suggesting that leaky gut and the intestinal microbiota play a role in the pathophysiology of M.E. In simple terms, it may be that M.E. patients' bodies deal with certain foods poorly, allowing common triggers through into the bloodstream and brain that cause the body to attack itself in typically autoimmune ways. 

By eliminating such foods, I've had some better periods of resilience, energy and relief from pain than for many years, and my latest full diabetic check-up last month had the experts doing a double-take at the near-perfect results I had for my HbA1c, weight, liver function etc. I've even had to come off my medicine for high blood pressure (I'd been on 10 mg Ramipril for years)in consultation with my GP.

For me, this radical change came from my decision last Spring to commit for a trial period to following the excellent wise advice of UK-based Dr Sarah Myhill. Her website can be found here and her books Diagnosis & Treatment of CFS & ME: It's mitochondria, not hypchondria and Prevent & Cure Diabetes: Delicious Diets not Dangerous Drugs (aimed at Type 2s but also helpful to Type 1s) are available on Amazon. Dr Myhill's good sense and experience with patients leads her to recommend a mineral and vitamin supplemented elimination diet that overlaps in some aspects with the Autoimmune Paleo Protocol (AIP)that developed independently in the US to alleviate other autoimmune conditions like Multiple Sclerosis. 

I'm not one for bandwagons or fads. I'm a magpie gathering the brightest insights I can find to signpost my own journey. These approaches were the springboard and support for my own explorations of ways to cope with what can't be cured at this time.

I can only wish you well with your own health. I understand from the inside all the daily struggles these autoimmune illnesses can involve, for patients and their loved ones. 

I hope one day biomedical research and, at last, a cure, will be found for all. Meanwhile, I hope you find the right signposts to point you on the best path forward for you! 

BUM PANCREAS MOMENT #79657435205

Every day has those moments, doesn't it?

After 33 years of being a Type 1 diabetic, every day usually has several moments. Or more.

Today's turned out to be this: that moment you're hypo (low blood sugar) so you neck a bit of sugar (for me these days, that's usually dates, rather than jelly babies) to bring you back into the land of the living.

Then you've got Rita (my blood glucose meter, paired as a handset with Humph, my insulin pump) shrieking and clanging her "ooh, look at me with my smartphone ringtones" fifteen minutes later, nagging you to retest, before you've had chance to recover or wash your pin-cushion fingertips after the sugar-fix imput!

So then, Rita all like:

"Oh, my stars! You're 17.8! Hyper alert!"

even though you're still hypo and drunkenly trying to type an explanation on her miniscule internal keyboard:

"Not hyper - just sugary fingertips after hypo" just so Reet won't record it as a true record and dob you in wrongly to the endocrinologist at the next diabetic review!

That!

As you were!

Humph the insulin pump and Rita the glucose meter,
when they were new and Rita was still
wearing her glam screen  protector!

PUMP ASSAULT AND BATTERY LIFE

Don't panic! Don't panic, pumper! Oh, wait...you weren't panicking, were you?

What a daft and daffy crazy world we live in.

Received an email from my insulin pump manufacturer today. About the insulin pump I've had connected to my Type 1 body for the last ten months, replacing the pump I wore for several years before that. Humph, he's called. Humph the pump, and the blood glucose meter/handset Humph's paired with is Rita. Rita the Meter. I know, I know. I'm a fine one to talk about it being a crazy world.

It's just that this email, with all that red lettering, alarmist klaxons blaring, sirens shrilling, kind of got my heart hammering. Before I had chance to read it, that is.

Was I in mortal danger of imminent pump-tastrophe? Was Humph starting to interfere with the gravitational pull of the Moon? Was Rita's Bluetooth deflecting the flight-paths of aircraft passing overhead and threatening national security? Was some emergency menacing my health or the state of the nation? Not quite.

The email's just telling me, in over-the-top watch-my-lips detail, that I can - *drum roll*- extend my battery life. How? By using only lithium AAA batteries of a certain brand. The very batteries that are the only ones available from the pump company. The only ones they issue with the rest of the pump supplies like cartridges and cannulas.

So I climbed back down off the ceiling, took off my tin hat and got back to what I was doing before my inbox exploded with scarlet scaremongery.

Of course, as an insulin pumper I need to understand the risk of dodgy batteries. Their sudden failure might well put my life at risk. But it's a bit late to tell me after such a long time. Plus, this is the same advice given by the company when the pump was first "fitted" at the hospital. Nothing to see here.

A single battery lasts me anywhere between 32-37 days before I notice any deterioration in performance. I usually change it when Humph and/or Rita start nagging me that battery charge has fallen to 85 or 90%. Any longer and I'm likely to realise my blood sugars are inching up towards double figures (in UK mmol/L) until the penny drops that I've forgotten I need to change the battery. Not recommended, but common sense wins the day. Rita's battery's rechargeable, flattering her self-image as a kind of tardy budget smartphone with added buffering while she calculates bolus amounts. Maybe one day Humph can go a bit more green as well!

In the body of the email, I discover that in spite of purporting to want to help me maximise battery life, they insist in bold that:

It is vital to change the lithium battery every 2 weeks, regardless of the battery indicator.

So I'm supposed to discard the battery, then, when it's only half exhausted.

I'm supposed to waste, not maximise, these non-rechargeable resources.

What's the point of the sophisticated battery indicator in the first place?

The battery indicator was the one thing I was most delighted about with this pump. The previous one, my first, didn't have that. It was all guess work, and no terror-alert emails back then, either!

What was I saying about it being a crazy world? Humph and Rita wholeheartedly agree!

TREES OF HOPE

If this resonates with you,  you may also be interested in my other blog which I wrote from 2010-2012 about my journey with the autoimmune conditions M.E. and Type 1 Diabetes
M.E. MYSELF AND I ASK YOU

Thank you so much for dropping by and for your comments, shares and wonderful encouragement along the way!

2017 - COMING READY OR NOT!

Sunset, South Yorkshire (all words and images author's own)

We don't have to search very hard for reminders of why 2016 has more than its fair share of reasons to be lamented loudly and then forgotten. Nightmare politics and propaganda, media meltdowns, financial uncertainty, deaths of a golden host of celebrity friends we thought we knew like family, unfathomable tragedies, war and hatred we children of the sixties once dreamed the world would be too wise and too compassionate for by now.

Sometimes just checking in on social media, letting our eyes scan a newspaper or fix on current affairs on the screen, can trigger a tailspin into hopelessness, cynicism, bitterness, shrugged shoulders, hardened hearts.

Coral and apricot skies

Today I decided. Time to focus on things I might have missed if I hadn't lived through this rollercoaster year. Time to allow myself to be thankful. Thankfulness washes world-weary shredded nerves like a gentle spa of healing for the heart.

Thankfulness doesn't mean you're suddenly Pollyanna. Gratitude doesn't cocoon you from empathy with those suffering or excuse you from giving a damn. But it can help you find your footing on the slimiest slope. It can remind you of the motive that coaxes you to get up for another day.

Spot the pigeon

Here are my treasures gleaned and gathered from 2016:

-taking the plunge of going gluten-free, dairy-free, nightshade-free to try and give my body with its tortured neuroimmune system a chance to heal itself. Gradually glimpsing a life beyond the constant fog of exhaustion, pain and sickness. Doesn't mean I'm miraculously cured of a lifelong knot of autoimmune illnesses, but it seems to have allowed me the blessing, at long last, of better days. I've even had to reduce my blood pressure pills down to the very minimum and my insulin cartridge lasts me a week! A couple of dried dates can bring me back from a low blood sugars now instead of 30 years of severe hypos rescued by jelly babies and lucozade! Result!

-discovering water Kefir grains, brewing homemade probiotic ginger beer and soda and enjoying what a positive effect it seems to have on my digestion. Plus I'm so attached I think of my little jellified chums as pets now, giving back so much more than they get from a shot of sugar and mineral water! Still going strong after six months, they're currently having a little rest and recuperation in my fridge over the holidays! They so deserve it! 

Water kefir in spring water

-being well enough for my first longed-for holiday, five days in June in fabulous Flamborough to restore my soul and get inspired for my novel which is set along that stunning coast. 

North Landing, Flamborough, East Yorkshire 

-reconnecting with my bestie from schooldays after she resettled in the UK after decades living abroad. Our weekly Skype adventures, texting, laughter and far-ranging heart-to-hearts till the early hours are a joy to my spirit. The years fall away and we're in our teens again, but even closer with the richer perspective of the years apart.

My bestie and I conquering the Skype gremlins 

-teaching myself how to bake the most moist, rich, delicious chocolate cake I've ever tasted, using coconut oil, almond flour and ingredients that no longer make my blood sugars spike, with the joy of never needing to deprive myself of my ultimate salted caramel treat! That is, if I've ever got any left after sharing it with eager friends and family!

Gluten-free salted caramel chocolate cake

-dog-sitting a variety of furry friends of friends who fill up, temporarily, that dog-shaped hole in my heart since my own lad passed away.

Cocker Spaniel sisters discovering treat puzzle ball

-inching towards the publication of my second novel, “Cloudhover Solstice” with all the attendant pleasures of plotting, researching, dreaming, writing and editing, plus the privilege of knowing how much my characters have found their fond place in the imaginations of my readers. So thankful to the kind few who support me by leaving a review, sharing posts, tweets and spreading the word. You are worth more than gold to me, even if I never earn a penny from my passion!

Work-in-progress novel. Not the *actual* cover!

-adventuring on a fungus foray by day and a bat walk by night in local woodland and having the quiet thrill of being at one with the wonderful natural world that surrounds us in this lovely corner of Yorkshire.

Orange Birch Bolete on the Fungus Foray in October

-soap! After night after night of sciatic twinges and cramps, googling in sheer desperation for help with agonising, sleep-shrinking restless legs, I came across what sounds like some mad old wives' tale of putting soap in a sock in your bed. I bought a cheap tablet of soap from the Co-op the next day, stuck it in an old knee-high, shoved it sceptically between the sheets. I haven't had full-blown cramp since that first night! No more idea why this works than anybody else – maybe I'm a mad old girl, too, but who's counting? 

Soap in a sock

-acquainting myself with my new all-singing, all-beeping insulin pump, Humph Mk II and his handset, the rather feisty Rita the Second. Yes, I still scream at Rita when I'm hypo and she's nagging me to eat. I still roll my eyes at Humph when he decides he needs new batteries in the middle of something more interesting. But you've got to love technology and ingenuity. They're keeping me alive from one moment to the next. My great gran was dead at 42 for lack of such inventions being widely available in the 1920s.

Me and my portable pancreas

-the birds, the Moon, passing planes, the trees, the flora and fauna, the clouds, the sunsets, the faces, the patterns, the colours that have kept my camera clicking throughout this year and the privilege of reliving eternally these moments frozen in time and sharing them with friends the world over.

Full Grain Moon over the wood

-friends, old and new, online and with flesh on, who remind me how many truly wonderful and special people are on this planet, fighting to ensure that love will always win over prejudice, bigotry and hate.

2017, you're welcome! You might not be gentle. You might not be all we hope for. But I'm coming to make the best of you, ready or not!

Hypoglycemic

Here's a humorous piece of flash fiction I wrote and which I'm sharing to mark 32 years of being a Type 1 insulin junkie diabetic.

Except that this isn't actually fiction. I inhabit this kind of parallel universe at least every month or so.

For all you diabetic Type 1s out there - enjoy the familiar feelings here.

For all you readers with a fully functioning pancreas - welcome to my crazy world!


Yes - the lack of paragraphs and punctuation below IS a reflection of the hypo state of mind.


This for me is what a hypo/low blood sugar REALLY feels like.

HYPOGLYCAEMIC

Here's the third instalment of my unplanned series "Writing wot I wrote about being Diabetic" posted this week. Writing this one started as a distraction activity from writing shorts and pitching to Womags and Competitions, but a few fragments here did lead to a story with a plot, so it was worth it.


This one's a piece of flash fiction under 500 words. Except that this isn't actually fiction. I live this at least once a month or so.
For all you diabetic Type 1s out there - enjoy the familiar feelings here.
For all you readers with a fully functioning pancreas - welcome to my crazy world!


Yes - the lack of paragraphs and punctuation below IS a reflection of the hypo state of mind.


This is what a hypo/low blood sugar REALLY feels like.

The blood glucose monitor reads 2.2.

No symptoms but I’m flying. Suddenly everything is cinnamon and dimity and I’m giggling till my two green eyes merge into one and start looking at the rocks and the rhythms between the surface of the salt waves and the myrtle green mist skimmed by rattling chocolate buttons and frogmarching steeples with clock faces I can’t make out. My mother is here. I can nearly see her and if I really concentrate I’m certain I can walk straight over the concertina chopsticks lining the path but they keep on moving to the centre and fanning out like a cartwheel of lemon juice and tripping me up. Did you know the days of the week are like a clothes line? It’s so obvious now. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are all on a level, with Tuesday and Thursday drooping between them, fixed in place by invisible pegs that ring low like a Rioja glass pinged by a fingernail with chipped purple varnish. The weekends join the other days together like an ornate but functional belt buckle. I’m sweating and trembling. I feel like I ought to strip off all my clothes but I wouldn’t trust myself to know where to stop and my flesh, all yellow and honeycomb inside would slip from my bones like a buzzing net negligee and what would the neighbours say? That makes me laugh more and I’m wheezing and hooting and stuffing the dry cushions into my mouth but you can still hear me because you’re saying so with a very serious expression and I laugh even harder and my forehead seems to have something arch going on with the carpet. I can’t move my eyes or my lips. Someone must have moved them just beyond my bodyspace and I’m thrashing about making sand angels on the floor and everything is gritty like the white noise when the radio is off the station and my synapses keep fizzing with static till the budgie makes the cage bounce as it nods its head faster and faster. There’s gurning and gargoyles or is that just me? I’m not getting any feedback and woolly seething serendipity is blocking the pores in my eardrums, stopping me coming up for air. It’s making no linear logic but I can see straight to the heart of truth like an arrow tip through a sappy apple. Somebody’s ravishing my lips apart. The sugar tastes like apricot petrol and burning rubber but at last I’m surfacing.

The monitor reads 4.1.

        I ache to go back where it all made sense.

SYMPTOM-ADDICT

I'm come back from the hospital,
They've seen the back of me.
They've poked where my injections go
And analyzed my wee.


They've read through my results book
Where I write down glucose highs,
They've pinged my knees with hammers,
Shone their torches in both eyes.


They say I'm doing wonderfully,
And pat me on the head;
Now my control is tight as tight,
There's something else instead.


Now, when my sugar plummets,
I've never had much sign
To know I'm going "hypo"
Till my reading's 1.9.*


By then I'm giggling like a drunk
And talking utter tosh;
They want my warning signals back,
But that will never wash!


My insulin's reducing,
To get my bloods to rise
That's working on the theory
That it acts as a disguise


To the craziest of symptoms
When you're hypo half the time.
But for me it's just ridiculous
Right down from the sublime.


"Hypo unawareness"
Is this thing they're trying to cure,
So I'll know I'm going hypo
When the symptoms show for sure.


I told them when I started
Back in 1984,
They had me running round the wards
And in and out the door


To show me what a hypo was,
And how it makes you feel;
In the end they had to bring me back-
My pancreas is unreal!


So watch this space, as ever;
I'll be doing as I'm told.
I'll be a model patient,
Keep my records, good as gold.


But how can you get warnings back,
Warnings you've never had?
You'd love me, when my sugar's low,
I'm twice as flipping mad!


* this reading is in in mmol/L - for American readers that converts to the shockingly low BG reading of 34.2mg/dL, at which point most "normal" diabetics are already comatose! LOL!

BMI - Blooming Mental Imagery

After 3 months I've shed the 3 and a half stones(about 22 kg) I had put on pound by pound after I collapsed with ME/CFS in October 2005. 

I voluntarily attended a diabetes type 1 half day course on "Carbohydrate Counting and Insulin Adjustment", a kind of mini "DAFNE (Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating)  at my local hospital. It was as if, in between the plastic fruit and veg and the toe-curling insights into the hopelessness of diabetic "control" for the last 25 years, someone had finally handed me the keys to the kingdom.

I came home and never looked back. No more hurried falsifying of my glucose test results  before attending diabetic clinic. No more mad swings up and down between giggling hypo and treacle swimming hyperglycaemia. No more looking in the mirror and seeing this michelin tyre imprisoned woman I no longer recognised as me.

My long acting basal insulin, that I previously thought as useless as injecting water, was reduced from 60+ units each day to only 18, split morning and evening. My bolus dose before meals that had been an erratic 24-12-18 is now, according to my personal insulin-to-carb-ratio (ICR), just 2 units per 10g carbs consumed. Instead of constantly battling to eat enough carbs and sugar to prevent myself falling into hypoglycaemia, I now eat much less carb without actually "low-carbing". That means between 2-5 units at breakfast, depending on whether I've eaten fruit or a serving of muesli. My new high-tech kitchen scales are a positive joy to help me work out instantly what I'll need to inject. Lunch, if I'm having a vegetable stir fry with some protein like my favourite oily fish, seafood or soya, can mean no insulin at all, as the tyrant carbohydrate doesn' demand it! I never feel hungry between meals, so I'm blessed by not craving snacks, so evening meal, of fruit, crackers, hummous, soup or whatever, only needs up to 8 units max, or, for a treat, unbattered cod with 125g chips on a Friday from our unbelievably excellent local chippie! Then that's 10 units (2 units for each of the 5 carb portions in those chips).

A former chocoholic, I can still completely acknowledge and understand the cravings and binges that haunted me since childhood. But now I can have one square of my favourite choc when my sugar dips into hypo (I rarely get hypo symptoms till I'm dithering about at 1.7!) instead of caving in to the compulsion to finish the lot. My glucose levels and insulin levels are now generally in the range a non-diabetic would enjoy, apart from the usual "unexplained" monthly hormonal dips when my woman's bod throws a wobbly. Same time as those carb cravings and sugar fantasies kick in worst, no coincidence! But with less insulin and less sugary "compensation", the peaks and troughs are much better ironed out now.

So now it's charity shop crawls to buy some smaller sized clothing (luckily I still have some smaller sizes from before I put on the weight through illness.) I tracked my weight loss smugly on one of those online "tickers" you can link to your homepage, and labelled mine "Getting me back from M.E".

So that's the diabetes "Big D" caged and warmly patted on the head for me, after a quarter of a century.  Just the ME to put back in the box now, and believe me, I've got it in my curvilicious sights!