Monday, August 28, 2006

The 2-year olds in Sunday School gather round me, focused on the round white disk on my arm. "What's that?" They ask. "Medicine," I say. "Oh..." one girl's eyes widen. "You have a boo-boo."

---

"Why is your cell phone like that?" The little girl's eyes are blue, solemn, serious. She looks up at me, precocious. "It's not a cell phone," I reply, consistently amazed by how often the little children pick up on difference. "It's medicine." "Oh." She processes the information. "Is it in your bottom?"

---

The second day of teaching, and I have drastically changed my basals so that I will no longer skyrocket after breakfast. For once, my body is responsive. Just short of 8:30, my class time, I test in at 63. I rejoice to be low for once. I drink juice, and suspend my pump, erring on the side of caution. Midway through class, I find the sweat gathering at my lip, above my brow. I fumble through, aware that my heart is racing. Back at my office, I test in at 50. Sometimes suspending just isn't enough.

---

Church on Sunday, I am 300-high, resiliently refusing (through no will of my own) to come down. Then, the plummet starts. The humidity blends with the drop, merges with the stops-and-starts of the after-church traffic, augments the exhausted-to-the-point of illness results of my 3 nights of insomnia. It is a wonder that I don't throw up. I spend the day listless, sad, tired.

---

Day in, day out, shaping our responses to each and everything. Teaching becomes dangerous, a chance to humiliate myself before students who admire me for my enthusiasm. Job interviews are worries, not because I am not sure if I am prepared, but because I am not sure if my morning blood sugars will swing too high, or too low, because they are never in the middle. How much juice will I consume in the course of one day? What will the job committees think? Will my diabetes work against me on the one-to-two day campus visits?

The fabric of our lives, indeed.

No comments: