How Did We Get Here?

Well, this journey started years ago, really.  A person does not become diabetic overnight.   I always had a tendency to gain weight and my husband may also have had that tendency. Okay, yea, he did too.  I was the champion and he was in hot pursuit.     So over the years, the pounds just kept coming.  (At this point you can observe that perhaps the picture attached to this blog is not recent…)

So, I decided that I had had enough.  I joined Weight Watchers.  It went very well - I lost 90 pounds.  I was nowhere near my goal weight but I was moving in the right direction.  Then we went on vacation. I gained a bit then.  A month after we came back, my Mom died.  That did not help the weight loss.    I made several half -hearted attempts to get back on the plan but...  This past fall, I went to the doctor for a physical.  Guess what – the worst news possible - “The lab reports are back and you look really good on paper”.  Why was this bad news?  Because there was no compelling reason to get me back on track.  

In the meantime, my husband had been to the doctor and was told that he was “pre-diabetic” and that he should lose weight.  He was also on medication for cholesterol and reflux.  So he was to eat less and exercise more. 

Does anyone really follow those orders from a doctor?

I did go into a slight panic about the “pre-diabetic” thing.  I used this as my opportunity and ordered a book and a cookbook to find out about it.  I didn’t read them.  It seemed confusing and, like my husband, I was ready to be in denial.

This was a basic mistake.  

 Months later, after trying to hide it for several days, my husband, Silent Sam, was forced to admit that he had a lump on his upper thigh.  Why was he forced to admit it?  Because he could barely walk.    He left for work and tried to go to his doctor to have it checked out.  Well, after going to that doctor for 30 years, it seems that the doctor had changed his office schedule and there were no longer walk in appointments.  He was turned away.   So, off we went to the ER.  In the ER, they told him that he had an infected cyst in his leg and that they were going to have to drain it.  Oh and that it would hurt – it would hurt a lot.  Just what everyone wants to hear…

In the process of getting ready for this, the ER doctor did come in and say that Silent Sam’s blood sugar level was 330 and that he needed to go to the doctor and get this taken care of – that he would need to go on pills to control it.   Yea, yea, yea… I could see the wheels turning in my husband’s head.  

We were all set to go home when the doctor announced that he was concerned about the incision site getting infected and that even though he had given my husband one round of IV antibiotics, he really would feel better if Silent Sam had two rounds.  The problem was that you can only do the IV antibiotics 11 hours apart.  So, Silent Sam was being admitted to the hospital. 

 

This was the gentle whisper that our lives were about to change…