My insurance company was nice enough to keep all arguments to themselves and send me a glucometer free of charge. It's really quite adorable.
I've decided to name her Bonnie Bloodchecker. I call her Bonnie for short.
I didn't know how to use Bonnie when I first got her and because my appointment was over a week away, I felt like Bonnie and I couldn't yet forge a friendship. But, as it turns out, my sister-in-law just happened to have an odd affinity for, close to an obsessive love for, glucometers. It's a very strange and lucky twist of fate that I married into a family that happened to have someone with the ever-elusive Glucometer Fetish. She showed me how to take my blood and check my sugar and I started doing it on my own twice a day. I had no idea when to check my Bonnie numbers, but I figured some numbers were better than no numbers when I met with this week-away doctor. I also started keeping a detailed food journal so that I could see patterns between my blood sugar and what I ate. And every time my blood sugar went higher than 130, I had a decent-sized pity party.
Finally, the day came to meet with the endocrinologist. Somehow, I thought that if I had all this information with me (the food journal, my Bonnie numbers, detailed questions, meal plans, exercise regimen, etc) in a neat little folder, she would tell me everything is fine and not to worry. So you can imagine it came as quite a shock when she complimented my dedication to health and wellness in one breath, and prescribed me daily insulin injections in the next. Insulin injections?! But I'm doing everything everyone in the world has recommended and I'm even writing it all down in my neatest handwriting. How could I be reliant on insulin at 28 weeks?! I'm the perfect patient and the picture of self-care!
I'm sure she could tell I was about to cry, and David told me to take a deep breath. I whispered, "Deep breaths make it worse, shut up." She assured me that we were being preventative, and Abraham would be completely fine if we kept our awareness high and stayed preemptive with our treatments. She told me insulin would never hurt Abe and that he was at no risk for having diabetes after we was born. I, however, now face a 50% increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life. Great. So my kid is fine, but his mom will be in a diabetic coma by the time he graduates high school. Not helping.
The sweetest nurse ever taught me how to administer my daily insulin shots. She gave me paperwork to fill out everyday with my Bonnie numbers and instructed me to fax them twice a week so that the doctor could determine when my insulin needed to be "upped". I have to get my Bonnie numbers 4 times a day and shoot insulin twice a day. That's six shots a day. Six needles. Everyday. You're jealous.
In the elevator on the way out, David smiled. "We got this." That helped a little bit. Then he went on. "Come on, babe. You've got too much panache to have a normal pregnancy! We had to shake it up a little bit somehow!" Then I laughed. He's kinda right.
So here it is, my insulin injector pen. It does not have a name yet. I'm open to suggestions. Anyone?
Pokey? Sugar momma? I used to be in awe of my friend when we lived in Israel who had diabetes. For some reason, I thought the cool kids gave themselves shots. And when she did it thru her jeans, I thought she was a rockstar. :)
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