I suppose that now is as good a time as any to say that I have been diagnosed as having diabetes, type 2. Now, I had always been aware of the disease and what caused it and what should be done. My grandmother was diabetic and my mother, the RN, had taught me early the wisdom of eating real foods, raw vegetables and fresh fruit. Fast food really wasn't a presence in my life until I had been married several years; and by then, my husband was quite spoiled to my cooking and we ate well almost every day. He loved the raw vegetables and big salads; and they often made up the bulk of our meals.
Of course, after we retired to Childress, David became quite ill with CIDP and wanted little food (although he continued to want raw salads, chocolate and popcorn!); and my Fibromyalgia grew worse to the point that I had no energy for anything. We did eat more hamburgers, but the salads continued to be his favorite food.
And every time he was in the hospital for several days, his blood glucose would be elevated and they would need to give him insulin. When he came home, we would check his blood glucose often and we watched what he ate; but the doctors did not put him on medication as they seemed to believe that it was one of those "in the hospital" things.
We did continue to monitor his blood sugar as often as he would allow me to stick his finger; and he didn't eat as many Hershey bars as he wanted. I will confess right now that had I known that he would only live a little longer, I would have let him eat anything he wanted; and I must have 'known' something as I did regularly cook things for him that he really wanted: chocolate cake or pecan pie, fruitcake (which he tried to live on while I was in the hospital one time!) or fudge.
And because of those early warnings in my family, I checked my blood glucose about once or twice a week to make sure that I was as well off as I thought; and it was fine. Even when I was hospitalized for several days in 2003, my blood glucose was fine. In fact, the doctor laughed that that was the only number that was in the normal range.
A year before, my wonderful family doctor had told me about a conference he had been to in Dallas where several specialists in Fibromyalgia had talked about the various things they were finding that helped with the severe pain, the sleeplessness, or the complete exhaustion. There, one doctor had suggested the use of a very small dose of Zyprexia taken at 7 PM as being valuable at giving the patient more energy in the morning.
And thus, I began taking Zyprexia. Yes, I knew that it was some sort of psychotic drug; but I did feel better in the mornings and I noticed no other change. It had no side effects. Hooray for no side effects and a good result. And so life went on.
2003 started out rather difficult. I was hospitalized with severe anemia, exhaustion, dehydration, and I don't really know what all was wrong. I was weak, couldn't walk across the floor without help, had hallucinations, had strange muscle jerks; all kinds of strange things were going on inside of me. After I was released, David had shoulder surgery in Amarillo. He grew more detached; the dementia increased.
March passed in a blur and in April I went back to my doctor as I was completely wiped out. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't care for David. And when he did the blood work that time, it showed my blood glucose elevated, where it had never been before. I was diabetic.
I am not sure just when the FDA announced that many who were taking Zyprexia were developing diabetes, but when I heard the news, I was devastated. And the truth about all of that is that the Zyprexia hadn't really even made my life any better at all.
It did take another year or two for me to settle in Fort Worth and find a geriatric doctor who addressed the diabetes by putting me on oral medication. No one ever told me to monitor my blood glucose or watch what I ate; but being a reader and having known the diabetics in my family, I did know how to care for myself and I do.
Strange ending for a blog, I suppose; but I couldn’t keep on writing and talk about the Fibro or about creativity or music or sewing or embroidery or church or anything else about my life, without being clear about the thing that controls so much of what I do. Now, you know.
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