Wednesday, December 24, 2008

I Got Hit by the Holiday Truck

Ugh.

All I can say right now is ugh. It's that time of year when most people are hit by a truckload of happiness and good cheer. It's the holidays, after all. Yes, I too was feeling that way yesterday morning when I rolled into work at 9am. I gave my co-workers (all 4 of them) gifts, and I felt downright giddy that Christmas is finally here. I love being able to give people presents and to recognize how much they mean to me.

By 11:30am, it was a different story. At some point, a truckload of sick had pulled up and covertly backed right over me. Suddenly, I was achy, super-tired, and worst of all, feeling nauseous. Really nauseous. I can't tell you the number of times I travelled to the bathroom yesterday at work, whether anything happened, or I just bent over the toilet for a few minutes at a time, finding only a false alarm.

Also, my blood sugar seemed to be dropping pretty rapidly, so I drank an entire bottle of blue Gatorade. I was hoping to cut off my inevitable dehydration at the pass. I had gone from 118 to 94 in a matter of 15 minutes or so, and my last bolus had only been about an hour before that. I waited for the Gatorade to kick in and retested. 84. I disconnected my pump, found myself out of glucose tabs, and ate a couple packets of sugar instead. (Not as pleasant as I'd hoped it to be.)

Then (TMI ALERT, LOOK AWAY!) I went back to the ladies' room and barfed. Not so ladylike.

Still working through my misery, I went back to doing stuff. I warned my boss that I was feeling horrible and I might need to go home early. I am sometimes a disorganized person, though, and I had been slacking on my work for the week. I wanted to make sure everything was done, or at least close enough to done, before I left on my holiday vacation. The rest of the hours passed at an agonizingly slow pace. I was still disconnected from my insulin pump, and another check of my blood glucose revealed an 86. WTF? I thought to myself. These are the numbers people without diabetes have! Something really weird is going on.

Weird, indeed. My feelings of health, happiness and good cheer continued to go down the tubes. I had all kinds of stomach unpleasantness; I was hurting; I was super-duper-sleepy and probably came about thisclose to nodding off at my desk. (BG still at 97...disconnected for like 3 hours at this point! REALLY?!) I thankfully was able to stagger out of work at 5pm, and I made it home safely. Of course, I was incredibly unhappy about all of this because I then left my co-worker at work when she had planned on going home early. I really hate disappointing people, and I was doing just that.

Got home. Shed clothing. Checked BG again...84. Naptime. Husband got home, talked to him for awhile about how horrible I felt, how I know I have been letting down my co-workers with my disorganization then dealt them a double-blow with getting horribly sick. He told me I should just not worry about it for now. I should get some sleep, and just make sure I try not to worry over all our vacation time, that way I can start 2009 ready to kick ass. I like that theory. Then I slept some, woke up, checked my BG, which was 235 (finally? I'm sick, it should be high!), and promptly barfed again.

The past 24 hours have been horrible and draining. And let's not even get into how it's Christmas Eve, I'm still sick, and the presents aren't wrapped. At least today I can eat and drink without revisiting it all an hour later. My mom just called to tell me now she's sick as well, with what sounds like the exact same thing, and that there's been an ice storm in Williamsport. Of course, this was accompanied by its own directions of how to best get in the house, which are pretty hilarious if you picture someone actually doing them. It pretty much involves slinking behind the shrubs at the front of the house, directly in front of the living room window, then sidling up onto the front stoop and coming in the door.

Ugh. I am definitely still sick. I'm going to squeeze in another nap before Matt gets home and we need to hit the road.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, blogfriends! And also, specifically, best wishes for a Healthy Holiday!

*head hitting pillow, this is Dorkabetic, signing off*

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Kitty Withdrawl

Every day, I end up parking my car half a block from my house. Our street is one way, with parking only on one side, so I appreciate having to do a little walking every day. Plus, where I park my car is free. Always a big plus as far as I'm concerned.

The biggest perk every day on my brief walk home is The House with the Cat. The cat is a big, fat, fluffy black kitty who is occasionally seated on the carpeted cat tree in front of the window. Other times I see him lumped happily on the back of the sofa, usually right next to his owner's head. I always look in the window to see if I can see the cat. Maybe this makes me some kind of Cat-o-phile. Maybe someone will make me go door-to-door in our neighborhood:

"Um, excuse me, ma'am, but if you see me within 50 feet of your cat, please feel free to tell me to get a life. Don't alert the authorities. I just want to pet him."

I miss having Sadako around. Sure, sometimes she was a bad kitty who peed on stuff, or kept us up half the night with her yowling when she was in heat, but she was a cute, sweet little cat. I miss having a cat. Of course, our present lease is what keeps us from having a cat. So I take every chance I can get to see kitties or pet them or whatever.

At least at holidays, I get to see this feline face:Porcupine, moments before she decides to bite you. While purring. And biting some more. My father-in-law tries to get her to go outside sometimes, but now that she's old and chubby, she's not so keen on that anymore. She likes to silently judge you from her position under the houseplant. Good kitty.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Mum's the Word.

There are just some things I cannot discuss at length here in this very public forum. Some of you are already my good friends, some of you readers I've never even met in real life, but I consider you friends.

There are some relatively personal things that are bothering me right now, but I just don't feel comfortable putting them out to the world here. Some of you can expect a Facebook message in the coming days, I feel. Yeah, sounds totally dumb that I can talk about it privately on a social networking site but not publicly where I come to express myself most freely.

I am not really looking forward to the next few days. I fear the tension they could bring. I am already stressed out enough, but I do hope the steps I take will serve to help.

And that's all I'm going to say for now, world. If you want to really know, you should try to find me somewhere that I can truly be myself without worry.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Scattered and Low

I can't seem to find my thoughts these days. I am not really sure where they're going, but obviously they have not been going here. I really wish they would, but lately my time has just been kind of draining.

There is stress at work, stress at home, stress with my family. I feel like I'm in over my head. I'm no stranger to depression, and I am familiar with the symptoms of more-than-average anxiety. I think I am swinging back in the direction of needing medication again so I can deal with all of this. I have been having a lot of trouble focusing lately, especially on work and on diabetes management. I'm forgetting to finish assignments I've started. I'm forgetting to bolus. I'm forgetting to attend to the lists I make for myself, and I have no motivation to even take 5 seconds out of my day to test my blood sugar.

Yes, taking care of one's self, either with or without diabetes, can be an uphill battle somedays. I acknowledge that my life should not be a cakewalk, and that yes, it is perfectly normal to be stressed out about things and occasionally somewhat anxious. I just feel like too much of my time lately is spent being forgetful, drifty, sad, apathetic, drained, hurt and empty.

It's time to talk to a doctor about this, and I figure my endocrinologist's office is a good place to start, especially since I think this non-lifting funk is really messing up my A1C, among other things. In the meantime, that appointment won't be until January 23rd, so I need to find some at-home ways to tough this out for a month.

Despite all my emotional crap, I am having an excellent holiday season so far. Matt and I are both kicking butt at our jobs. My boss even wants to send me out to Financial Aid training in the near future so I can assist the students at our university even more, which is a big investment in this sometimes-absent-minded office assistant who has trouble getting the filing system organized. My friends are still super-fantastic. My car is still running. And tonight, I will be dressing up in this little number:



















to attend Matt's holiday party for work. Food and booze on the company dime with Matt's fun work friends? Yes, please! It'll be so much more fun than last year now that we both know Matt's co-workers a lot better. And yes, we've been invited to the after-party. Among we dorks, that is a big deal. (FYI...this party will be filled with dorky engineers, so all mayhem and merrymaking will be done with a heaping helping of logic and brains. Note to any zombies reading this blog: no, the brains are not for eating.)

I am hoping that my overall mental state improves greatly soon. But we are all pretty familiar with the connection between diabetes and depression. I am going to work hard to get back to blogging with regularity. I miss you guys, and sometimes a girl just needs to vent to the entire internet. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Oh My Aching Ovaries

I think I may have yet another ovarian cyst that ruptured. Same symptoms today as the last ordeal that landed me in the ER.

Gynecologist is squeezing me in tomorrow morning, and she'll probably send me for an ultrasound.

I want an answer to my problems. This is the fourth time this has happened in a year.

Sure, there's a possibility it's not even my ovaries, but this has happened too many times now to continue to ignore it. It's also a problem my grandmother and my mother had. In fact, my mom is still dealing with female-hormone-related problems. Hooray for genetics.

This sucks. I'm going to use a heating pad and take a nap.