Deathwish 024: Leo
“every time I eat, I am digging my grave with my spoon”
I have type 2 diabetes. Predisposed genetically and triggered by decades of pizza, mac & cheese, ketchup and oatmeal crème pies. Add a decade of horrible ultra work stress, and you have a trigger. When I was in my late twenties, I thought I was invincible. Now every time I eat, I am digging my grave with my spoon.
I think about death with every meal. I say grace, don’t know why, because I’m eating poison. Carbs turn into glucose but my pancreas is broken, so it’s all poison. I used to sugar-coat it with positive self talk, horrible side-effected meds that ruin your liver, and pig insulin that ruins your veins. You can live longer with a broken liver and veins than a broken pancreas, so I will eventually eat myself to death.
I tried not eating, but when I went to sleep, my lovely liver just dumped glucose into my blood stream with no shut-off mechanism.
Diabetes has no cure. Just manage the carbs, exercise, and control the A1C level. Manage your diabetes is the only option. Trust me, I’ve tried every gimmick and new-age health system. We live in such a modified food world, that you can’t get back to Paleo-normal.
Diabetes is as certain as death: no cure, just manage, prolong diabetes, prolong death.
It’s not so bad. We all die. You get used to the thought of death by eating. It’s the fucking diabetic complications that bother me.
Daily nausea, chronic digestive events from meds, being surrounded by food you know you shouldn’t eat, loss of body hair, loss of feeling in your feet, loss of limbs, and of course, impotence.
The thinking about death isn’t as bad as managing death, trust me.
The upside?
Insurance pays for erectile dysfunction medication without really needing it, yet.
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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 023: Rachel," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.
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Leo was born in Grand Rapids, MI and currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI.