Diabesity

I ended up cutting the tiny tablet in half with the blunt red handled knife I used to saw lumps off sourdough bread.

“If this be madness, bring it Lord” I sighed as I licked the white powder from the draining board like James Woods in The Boost.

And then into quarters.

And one fine day there was none.

I ring my GP and sit in the waiting room with the shrieking cartoons re-reading the tattered magazine about fancy houses and gardens that has a surgery sticker on it saying Do Not Remove

“I’ve weaned myself off the meds” says I to the Doctor in her room.

“I can’t be sedated and dumbed down, my happiness is turned off, my spark is gone, I can’t write, I sleep for 13 hours and I have only a 30 minute window of normality in any given day when my eyes are not swollen and puffy before I take another dose, I’ll deal with it, I’ll recognise the cyclical nature of it and withdraw and meditate, and here you may take bloods and see if I have arthritis or some shit as even my hair hurts”

I proffer my dimpled white arm across the table.

“And ps I’m as fat as a fool” I announce walking to the scales.

She makes an appointment for me to see the nurse who does the fasting bloods and advises if I am on my 3^rd straight sleepless night of singing and drawing in the kitchen @ 5am to take a half tablet to sleep.

“I might even exercise” says I laughing, visualising myself on a shaded beach at evening time, my ankles enveloped in soft damp sand as I watch the ship I lived on sail away into the sunset.

A week later I call for the results.

“Did you know you were Diabetic?” says the Nurse saying words while the blood roars in my ears.

A lifetime of fasting and overdosing on ice-cream at midnight has come to this.

In early spring I skelped another Easter Egg off the mantelpiece to hear the satisfying crack of the shell and laughed to myself at the thought – this won’t end well.

I get called in to the Diabetes Clinic.

Shit just got real.

In my innocence I thought she would blah blah about sugar and give me a diet sheet.

“I be all over this like white on rye, I’ll reverse it” says I naively on the phone using words I have only heard on TV.

I’ll lose a shedful of weight and transform into a stunning brunette as opposed to an obese maniac.

Labels, it’s all labels.

On paper I am an obese, bi-polar, diabetic, menopausal broad.

In my head I am 16.

The Nurse calls me into the room and before I can tell her a hundred jokes she has me lying in my knickers on a bed while I have an ECG.

Whoa.

She tests the soles of my sandy feet with the scarlet nails for Neuropathy.

She weighs and measures me, and there is much hilarity as she writes down the numbers.

Christ, I think.

She checks my blood pressure and my BMI.

She tells me about the importance of foot care and advises I need to see a Chiropodist,  that I can’t go barefoot anymore, that I can’t use a hot water bottle. She says I need to register with Diabetes Ireland and see a Dietician. She mentions amputations. She tells me I need to make an appointment to have a Retina Scan, she mentions blindness. She hands me 87 brochures and a machine called a Glucometer to test my bloods, assembling and re-assembling the lancets and priming the needle as my mind has gone blank and I can’t process what is happening.

She tells me I need a flu injection, a pneumonia injection, and that people with Diabetes are 17 times more likely to have kidney problems, and then stuffs all the things in a fancy bag that someone else has left behind.

I buy a tiny one -person strawberry trifle in Tesco on the walk home.

I think it was the shock.

Diary Entry July 23

I cook scrambled eggs on brown toast for breakfast and walk on the quay for an hour.

I tell Hewhomustnotbenamed that the giant  jar of home-made  Apple Cider Vinegar on the kitchen table is piss.

He blanches and says “You don’t need THAT much!”

Oh, how we laughed.

Diary Entry July 27

Due to 3 results of my blood pressure being very high I am booked in for a 24 hour BP Monitor with a machine on my hip and a cuff on my arm. The tightness every 20 minutes leaves me gasping and I have pins and needles in my hand. Horror stories from people saying “You won’t close your eyes this night” and my own Skin & Blister informs she tore hers off at 3am.

I don’t.

For some reason I am being good

For a change.

Counting the hours down with the Monitor

Diary Entry  1^st August

My bloods are in Normal range for a week. I am hungry in the mornings. I don’t feel so exhausted.

“You know that speedy nervous feeling you were getting?” says the Nurse as she bends to read the scales. “What did you think that was?”

Coffee, says I and smile when she tells me I am 3 kilos lighter.

Bi-Polar, Obese, Manic, Diabetic, Menopausal, Coffee Hound................

The waiter in the hotel brings me cold meat and undressed leaves, the salad, not him.

I read the labels in the supermarket for an hour hanging over the trolley in a stupor.

Carbs turn to sugar too ................

Whole Lotta Rosie 

Diary Entry 4^th August

I sell a book to a woman named Walker and buy a Pedometer.

#youcouldntmakeitup

Diary Entry 7^th August

A woman from Canada buys a book so I purchase a pair of runners designed after scientists watched Masai Warriors run across the desert.

“Have you worn them before?” says the woman wrapping them while I demur.

“I hear they’re woeful but great for the calves” says she smiling while I gaze longingly at her flip flops.

Bloods 6.0        Steps taken 4,595

Diary Entry 11^th August

I bake a loaf of brown bread with walnuts and seeds in it. I walk the dogs till the 3 of us are in a hoop. I get a sparkling new laptop and a hard-drive to back up stuff.  I curse the Masai Warriors and their long shapely legs and damn the designers of the footwear to hell.

Bloods 6.0      Steps taken 10,397

Diary Entry 14^th August

I download an App called “Map my Walk” but re-consider and find my headphones. I put on lycra leggings and a vest despite looking like an Oompa Loompa. I don the MBT’s and lash off up the road to “Thunderstruck”  on my Ac/Dc playlist. I pant up the hill to “Hells Bells”. I march down to the Quay to “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and fittingly gasp up the hill home to “Whole Lotta Rosie”.

I appear to have the same relationship with my footwear as Cheryl Strayed in Wild.  

It’s getting easier.

I kinda dig it.

And it doesn’t hurt to stretch to close the window.

“Have you weighed yourself at all at all?” says The Quiet Leitrim Man as his eyes slide from the Olympic Golf to my stomach, which appears to be smaller.

Not yet, I answer with a sly smile.

Bloods 6.0        Steps Taken 14,777

Pale, swollen  and exhausted before diagnosis 

I decided to write this to explain, amuse and inform.

To explain my silence and lack of output,

To discuss medical matters in a light hearted way.

To make someone think twice about opening a bar of chocolate or not walking the length of themselves.

Or both.

Diabetes is on the increase all over the planet, and uncontrolled blood sugars can lead to horrendous outcomes. If you are concerned then have the test, and take the steps.

I have a new label that I can attach to my increasing list –

Walking Miracle

I’m sure the Warrior Men will be delighted


www.youtube.com/watch?v=niWNYwumRnw&feature=youtu.be


MDM August 2016


www.amazon.com/Scourged-Ms-Michelle-Dooley-Mahon/dp/0993277314



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