2001-05-20 - 11:33 p.m.

A Diabetic Episode

It's a daily ritual. Every morning after I get up I have to read my blood sugar using a little blood testing machine.

The machine is about the size of a Palm Pilot. It was only $40 when I bought it five years ago, and I thought that was a great deal for a relatively sophisticated piece of equipment. However, where they really screw you in on the little tabs you need to buy to work the machine. They are really just little slips of cardboard, and yet they cost about fifty cents apiece. That doesn't sound like much, but if you take your blood sugar twice a day a month's supply of little cardboard strips costs $30.

It's ridiculously easy to work the machine. You turn it on, stick a little cardboard tab into it, you put a drop of blood on the little circle on the cardboard tab, and 45 seconds later it tells you what your blood sugar is.

That does sound easy, doesn't it? Of course the hard part is getting blood out of yourself. You poke the end of one of your fingers with a lancet and squeeze a drop of blood out. I always use my left hand so all those fingers always have red dots on them.

So anyway, this morning I was taking my blood sugar, half awake as usual. I jabbed the end of my finger with the lancet and a tiny drop of blood appeared. I squeezed it to get a bigger drop, but instead of a tiny drop it squirted everywhere. Jumping Jehosiphat! The last thing I want to deal with first thing in the morning is blood squirting everywhere. Sheesh! Especially when it's MY blood!

The dangers of self-testing.

Anyway, I don't know if I've mentioned it before but my Dad was a diabetic. In his obituary in the newspaper, we said that people could, if they wanted to, send contributions in his name to the American Diabetes Association.

This is actually pretty ironic because Dad was always in deep denial about his diabetes. He was a nut for sugary things and used to get very upset if the people at the adult home tried to keep sweets from him. Once, at dessert time, when one of the waitresses tried to chastise him, he shouted: "I want my pie!"

He even went so far as to ask his diabetes doctor (and mine too) to write a note to the Hotel Happy staff, telling them that he DIDN'T have diabetes. When my doctor told me that I laughed and laughed. Then I asked if he could write me one, too.

I don't know if the symptoms of diabetes speeded his demise, but it certainly didn't help. Hopefully it will inspire me to take care of my diabetes. Here's another little bit of irony: in spite of the fact that my Dad was in his late 70s and was in total denial and didn't take care of himself at all, his blood sugar was apparently under better control than mine was.

Let that be a lesson to me.