Diagnosed T2 Diabetic
Life does indeed serve us lemons.
Lots of them.
Life can change at any moment.
Life can present us with unexpected illnesses and deaths.
Life is hard and unfair.
Through the good and the bad, life can be challenging.
As for the unexpected, many people conclude that the life they are living has left them stressed, sick, and faced with a new diagnosis. A diagnosis that they never thought would be an addition to their time on this Earth.
Some are death sentences.
Some leave us feeling more isolated and depressed.
Some can be managed with lifestyle changes.
Some can be given hope with treatment and support.
Many people live their lives with diseases and or conditions that are silently taking over their bodies.
Some diseases prey on the body with no symptoms at all.
In my world, my life changed when I went to a routine eye exam as scores from a peripheral vision test indicated that I needed a second screening.
At the time, I was 42 years old, active, and ate healthily.
I thought to myself, hmmm I will just return next week and get checked and it will be no big deal! Maybe something was wrong with the machine.
The week passed and I had no lingering worry about my upcoming appointment. It was there that the four walls of the room became a little dark as I began to sink in the chair when the doctor told me that my right eye had damage to the optic nerve due to Glaucoma.
What the actual fawk?
I remember asking the doctor about how I should be taking the news.
I wasn't exactly sure how to respond.
I was lost.
I was in shock.
And I was confused because I didn't understand what having Glaucoma meant.
All I could think about was...
Will I be blind?
When will I go blind?
OMG! Am I 100 years old?
“Glaucoma is a disease that damages your eye’s optic nerve. It usually happens when fluid builds up in the front part of your eye. That extra fluid increases the pressure in your eye, damaging the optic nerve.”
Generally speaking, Glaucoma patients are older as this is the leading cause of blindness in people over 60 years old.
I was 42.
WTF.
After my appointment, I went home and through family history and conversations with family, I realized that I won the lottery in the genetics department. As my father also has Glaucoma in the same eye.
On a positive note, treatment options could stop the damage from becoming worse along with reoccurring checkups to monitor both of my eyes.
I take an eye drop once in the night in my right eye as treatment.
The bonus is the drops can make my eyelashes grow.
I will deal with the short eyelashes on my left eye at a later time.
One silver lining.
I still had this lingering feeling inside that something else was wrong. It was only then that I connected all my other body abnormalities and pains to the present. Symptoms that I believed were an impact of Anxiety and PTSD. I felt like a hypochondriac.
Could it be something else?
These symptoms included but were not limited to:
Night sweats
Irritability
Hypoglycemia
Hyperglycemia
Increased thirst
Frequent trips to go pee-pee
Headaches
Mood Swings
Brain Fog
Metal taste in my mouth
Fatigue
Darkening of skin in the nether region
Weight Loss
Deficits in memory
After I requested a blood panel to check all my organs and levels I was taken back by the unexpected.
I have Type 2 Diabetes.
I won the lottery again genetically speaking.
I don't fit the classic mold for someone living with T2. I am not overweight, I eat well, I am active and healthy.
Again, I am only 42 years young.
“Type 2 means that your body doesn’t use insulin properly. And while some people can control their blood sugar levels with healthy eating and exercise, others may need medication or insulin to manage it. ”
Holy guacamole! Yea, I have no idea where to start.
What do I eat?
What do you mean by measuring out my carbs?
Good carbs and bad carbs?
This is for the rest of my life?
What are the complications if I don't manage this disease?
This is forever.
Every day until I get my one-way ticket to Jesus Town.
WTF.
I am only 42 years old.
I've cried and felt sorry for myself.
I bought a handful of Diabetics recipe books.
I have listened to podcasts and read blogs.
I've flipped off the Diabetic commercials on TV often yelling at the screen sarcastically expressing my newfound love for poking my finger every day.
No more sinfully decadent sweet treats, fancy coffees, loaves of bread, and falling into wells of wine.
I started Metformin and after taking the first nightly dose I had a new wave of energy that I haven't felt for god knows how long.
This is the moment that I understood how sick I had actually been.
I wanted to write this post for today, to share with you how I found out I was diabetic. In all actuality, my body had been trying to tell me something was wrong, but I was a self-proclaimed doctor using Web MD. My denial kept me locked in a thought process that I was just experiencing the fallout and recovery of a bad PTSD episode. I centered everything around my mental health and gave no opportunity or opportunities for self-realization that something else could be wrong with me.
How could there be?
I was 42 and healthy.
Through this blog, I wanted to continue to talk with you about the importance of mental health and offer you a place to come and learn skills, gain resources, and join a community of like-minded people who want to learn more about themselves.
I also want to talk more about Diabetes and share the research and ideas that I have found connecting Diabetes to mental health.
This time I will not be using Web MD.
In closing, it truly was an unexpected diagnosis of both Glaucoma and T2. If it wasn't for my preventive eye exam and the diagnosis of Low-Pressure Glaucoma I would have eventually passed out or not woken up in the morning due to complications of unregulated blood sugars.
Life does give lemons.
Life can throw us many curveballs, regardless of our age and what is going on in our lives.
Healthy people can develop diseases too.
It's what we do with those lemons that helps develop us into being better humans.
I am going to continue to make lemonade with said lemons.
but I will opt for the sugar-free version.
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