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Post COVID infection and treatment, the doctor discovered I had diabetes, something I thought I had escaped despite my mom having it. This World Diabetes Day, here's my diabetes story!
I have a confession to make.
I was always confident that I would go into my old age half bald and itching away to glory. You see, I not only resemble my dad physically, apparently, I even react to situations with similar responses as his. Hence I would be the natural inheritor of his gene pool.
Never did I think that my mom’s genes would make their presence felt. I was very sure diabetes wouldn’t embrace me like it did my mother.
As John Lennon said, life is what happens while you are busy plotting stuff.
This year, during the second wave, my entire family came down with COVID. My husband and I had it real bad, but we made it through thanks to the diligent care given by our two (nearly grown up) children who were barely out of their own COVID infection.
I realized how close it was only when the doctor who saved us visited us this Diwali and kept saying, ‘it was touch and go with you two!’
My son realized something was fishy when one of the doctors while going through my blood reports kept asking him if I had a sugar problem. She raised the red flag of co-morbidities. We kept denying it because seriously there was no chance of my getting diabetes. I had beaten the gene pool odds you see!
But test after test the sugar levels kept spiking up.
We explained it to ourselves as a spike due to the excessive intake of the heavy dosage of steroids I had taken to make it through COVID.
Three months passed. My ratings didn’t abate. I gave myself a month of sugar abstinence and walks.
The next test was a nightmare. The H1ABC now read 10.2.
It was time for me to face the truth. I was now a confirmed diabetic.
Like my dear mother.
My first reaction was of sheer horror. This couldn’t be happening to me. It wasn’t supposed to.
It took me two days to accept and settle into my new state of sugar watching.
A week later, I went to meet an endocrinologist suggested by a dear friend.
To say he was shocked would be an understatement. That I wasn’t under any treatment even with my readings being so bad. I explained my best, saying, we thought it was a Covid spillover.
He immediately put me under medication and hoped I would undertake major lifestyle changes. Cutting carbs, throwing junk out and walking like hell.
My blood sugar level had to be monitored daily.
To ace any disease, it has to be a team effort. In my case, my husband, my partner has diligently punctured my finger daily, measured and tabulated the sugar levels.
It was a month to a day yesterday and I’m happy to report that I have begun to show good results and my medication has reduced.
But it is a long long haul yet before I can exhale
I’m positive though, I can ace this new challenge too.
I say that it has got to do with my blood type! I’m A+ always positive.
I diligently stick to the course, generate newer goalposts, reward myself for small victories and never forget the larger picture.
I’m a TB survivor. A COVID veteran. Now a Diabetes fighter.
Come on life. Serve me your googlies. I’ll take you in my stride Because I’ve got only this one life to live queen size!
Because Kahaani Abhi Shuru Hui! (the story has just begun).
Image source: the author
Anupama Jain is the author of: * ’Kings Saviours & Scoundrels -Timeless Tales from Katha Sarita Sagara’, listed as one of the best books of 2022 by @Wordsopedia. Rooted in the traditional storytelling of Indian legends, warriors, read more...
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I huffed, puffed and panted up the hill, taking many rest breaks along the way. My calf muscles pained, my heart protested, and my breathing became heavy at one stage.
“Let’s turn back,” my husband remarked. We stood at the foot of Shravanbelagola – one of the most revered Jain pilgrimage centres. “We will not climb the hill,” he continued.
My husband and I were vacationing in Karnataka. It was the month of May, and even at the early hour of 8 am in the morning, the sun scorched our backs. After visiting Bangalore and Mysore, we had made a planned stop at this holy site in the Southern part of the state en route to Hosur. Even while planning our vacation, my husband was very excited at the prospect of visiting this place and the 18 m high statue of Lord Gometeshwara, considered one of the world’s tallest free-standing monolithic statues.
What we hadn’t bargained for was there would be 1001 granite steps that needed to be climbed to have a close-up view of this colossal magic three thousand feet above sea level on a hilltop. It would be an understatement to term it as an arduous climb.
She was sure she was dying of cancer the first time her periods came. Why did her mother not explain anything? Why did no one say anything?
Sneha still remembers the time when she had her first period.
She was returning home from school in a cycle-rickshaw in which four girls used to commute to school. When she found something sticky on the place where she was sitting, she wanted to hide it, but she would be the first girl to get down and others were bound to notice it. She was a nervous wreck.
As expected, everyone had a hearty laugh seeing her condition. She wondered what the rickshaw-wallah thought of her. Running towards her home, she told her mother about it. And then, she saw. There was blood all over. Was she suffering from some sickness? Cancer? Her maternal uncle had died of blood cancer!
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