It’s All Bad Sugar
In 2020, I was formally diagnosed with type II diabetes. This had all occurred about a month before the COVID-19 lockdown and it really stemmed from what I later learned was an unrelated diagnosis of spinal stenosis. For much of 2019, I battled a nagging pain in my left shoulder. It was a dull and throbbing pain that just never seemed to go away. It always seemed to hit me while I was at work, while I would be sitting at my desk and just typing away as I did and still do. It was also during the summer of 2019 when I experienced another unusual health abnormality, one that seemed to strike every early morning, usually between 12am and 2am. Every morning for months, I would wake up and get a drink of water. I had justified this sort of random, but persistent thirst, as being a function of it being the summer and that maybe, I was just thirstier than I was used to. At that point, I suppose I wasn’t in the habit of drinking water, not even at acceptable, preferred levels. Rest assured that my regular production of urine was a nice shade of yellow, much like melted butter. To some degree, it still is that color, which means that I need to step up my water intake.
I went to the doctor in January 2020, which would be my first of many appointments with my new doctor at the time, Dr. Fires. This would also be my first official doctor visit in nearly a decade, since I left my last doctor in 2011. Dr. Fires specialized in obesity and apparently seeing fat people and trying to help them with getting their weight down and keeping it down. It was through a blood test that my life would change that mid-January. I received a phone call from Dr. Fires’ office a day or two later, confirming my blood test results. Indeed, my A1C levels were through the roof (13.0+). Prescriptions had already gone out well before that phone call. I was instructed to pick up a slew of medications that day and to be on the lookout in the mail for a blood glucose meter. I was confirmed to be a type II diabetic, though relieved that I did not have to inject insulin. I don’t have a fear of needles or syringes. I just didn’t like the idea of having to inject myself with anything. Yes, I would have made a terrible intravenous drug user.
Through a subsequent specialized appointment elsewhere, my spinal stenosis would also be confirmed through some manner of MRI or similar kind of electronic imaging. After taking some steroid medication for just under two weeks, that cleared up completely and as of this writing, it has not come back. Perhaps to help with the mobility of my left shoulder, I had also been sent to do physical therapy for two weeks. These sessions abruptly came to an end when the COVID-19 lock down went into effect. Physical therapy was a reminder that I was fat and nowhere near as mobile as I thought I was. Still, I think it helped, though I don’t think I’d want to try it again, unless forced into it.
Today, and with the help of the various medications I take, I am the healthiest I have been in over 20 years. My A1C levels are below 6.0. I have lost nearly 40 pounds since August 2022. I feel great physically. Dr. Fires has a lot to do with my success and I will be forever grateful for his knowledge and assistance. Dr. Fires left the medical group to which I am subscribed at the end of June, so just a few weeks ago. I have yet to find another doctor, though this is not to say that I won’t ever find a new doctor and that I’m not looking.
Maybe in due time, if I continue making progress, eventually I’ll be deemed diabetes-free (if that’s even an actual term)? I’m in no rush, mind you. Living with type II diabetes has been interesting, to say the least, but if I can get off the medication and “do it on my own”, I think I’ll be better off. In the meantime, I will continue to see sugar as a sworn enemy, though one with which I still engage from time to time.