I guess I can do this for that long, and heaven knows I have a lot to write about just in what's been happening to me the last little while.
About a month ago I started to not feel so hot. Track season had just begun, and I have had practice every day after school, and there are track meets on the weekends. I’m a junior this year and I’m in two events: the 110 meter high hurdles, and the high jump (the best events in my opinion). Practices were going pretty good. Mr. Ray, the coach for those two events, was working the junior and senior hurdlers and high jumpers pretty hard, getting us back in shape from the long winter of inactivity. So that meant that Lisa, Sheridan, Rod, Treena and I, were running laps up and down the stadium bleachers for our warm ups. Then came the real work-out. Basically, Mr. Ray would have us start on the bottom bench of the bleachers, squat down with our arms stretched out in front of us , and jump straight up and land with both feet on the next bench. When we’d land on that higher bench, we were supposed to squat down again and begin the process all over. I can hear you saying to yourself that this doesn’t sound so bad. Well, there are 35 rows of benches on the bleachers, and we had to go from bottom to top, turn around and do the same thing coming back down. Five times. Every day. For the next three weeks. And that was just our warms ups, not our daily work outs! Let me tell you, the act of squatting and jumping up all 35 of those bad boys will get your legs burning in no time.
As fun as that sounds, the day after is always worse. I get to school, and have to squat down to get my books out of the bottom of my locker. This would cause my legs to turn to jelly, and I’d nearly fall to the ground, whimpering. And then of course I had to stand back up, which hurt just as bad. I guess that is the price to pay when the sports you are involved in depend on having strong leg muscles and jumping. I could hardly wait for those three weeks to be over!
In addition to the soreness, for days I had just been feeling crappy. I was so thirsty ALL THE TIME. It’s like I couldn’t get enough to drink. No amount of liquid seemed enough. I was hungry, too, but that I just chalked up to being a teenage boy. For example, on the way to school I would stop at the Seven-Eleven to get a big Coke, and would have it finished by the time I got to my locker at school that morning. Then, right before first period I would totally have to pee. That’s understandable right? I mean I had just downed a 44 ounce beverage. So I would rush to the bathroom before class. But then, before first period English was over, I totally had to go again. Mr. Rodrigue has an open bathroom policy, so I could get up and go to the bathroom as long as it wasn’t during a lecture. And after I had gone to the bathroom, I would stop at the drinking fountain and drink what seemed like a gallon of water. I’ll say this again, it was as if I could not get enough to drink. My mouth would get all dry and the only thing that seemed to satisfy me (for the moment at least) was to drink MORE. Well, a repeat of the bathroom visits happened during Communications. And Biology. All day long. Each time I went to the bathroom it was like a full bladder release. I don't mean to be all gross, but I’m just telling it like it is.
Well, over the next couple of days things were the same. We went as a family to go mini-golfing one night, and I had to go to the bathroom a few times in the hour or so we were there, plus I had about three big refills on the Coke I had gotten at the concession stand, too. My mom asked me if I was feeling alright, and I told her what had been happening. When we got home, she set up a doctor's appointment for the next day. I remember it well. It was February 18, 2009. The day my life changed.
I went to Dr. Watkin's office the next morning, and told him what I had told my mom the night before about always being thirsty, and having to pee all the time. He had me estimate how much liquid I would drink in a typical day. Then he asked me all sorts of questions, but one question stood out as weird. He asked me what color my pee was. I know that seems like “too much information”, but that was what he asked. And my answer was "clear." He also asked if my pee smelled funny. All I could think to tell him was that it was a little stronger smelling than normal….and kind of fruity smelling at the same time. What the heck was wrong with me?
Then he said he was going to do a blood-glucose test. He pulled out this little devise that looked like a short, stubby magic marker, pulled back a trigger, touched it to the end of my index finger and pushed a button on the side of the barrel. The thing poked my finger, but it didn’t really hurt or anything. A little droplet of blood appeared, and he dabbed that onto this little cell phone looking gizmo he had. The gizmo had a little LCD screen on it, and it started counting down from five to zero. Then it beeped and showed a number....a not very good number as it turned out: 485. He looked at me, and then at my mom (who wanted to be there and pester the doctor with questions) and then said the 4 worst words a 16 year old could possibly hear, "Jake, you have diabetes."
"I thought you had to be morbidly obese people like those contestants on the Biggest Loser, and eat a ton of sugary, fatty crap to get that," I said. Apparently those aren’t the only people who get diabetes. Apparently skinny white kids from small New Mexico towns could get it, too.
He then explained what this was going to mean for me. He told me that every human being has an internal organ called the pancreas, and the job of the pancreas is to produce insulin, which helps the body break down and absorb the nutrients in your food so the body can use them. Okay, he talked in way more technical terms, and I'm not a doctor, but this is how I understood it. My pancreas wasn’t working anymore, so there was little or no insulin production going on, meaning that my body couldn't break down and use the nutrients in the food I was eating. My kidneys were working overtime to try and process all these nutrients that weren’t being used elsewhere in the body, and changed it all into pee. That explains why I had to go all the time. That also explains why I seemed to be hungry and especially thirsty all the time. My body was craving food and liquid, but then when I would eat and drink, it wasn’t able to use what I was feeding it, and just turning it all into urine. Again, this may not be scientifically what was going on, but is how I understood it, and it made sense to me.
Then came the fun part of that doctor visit. Dr. Watkins told me that I would have to be started on an insulin injection regimen. Translation: I would have start giving myself shots of insulin, because my body wasn't producing it. Okay, it's not like I am scared of needles or anything, but the way he was talking, this was sounding like a LOT of shots.
Whoa, this is turning out to be quite the long first blog entry. I've got other homework to work on, and since this will be an on-going assignment, we'll call it good for today, and pick up at this point tomorrow. Until then, try not to have nightmares about me sticking needles into my own body every day. That’s what I dreamed about that night.
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