Open Letter to GW Hospital: Go Fuck Yourself

Dear GW Hospital-

I gave you the benefit of the doubt.  I waited in your ER for 18 hours.  I watched as I was served a sugar-filled breakfast the morning after my diagnosis.  I stood idly by as a nurse referred to a glucose monitor as an insulin tester.  I didn't flinch when it took you 2 days to up my insulin.  I didn't blink when two nurses seemed to have different instructions.  I sat passively as you said I could be discharged and then retreated, keeping me another night.  I figured you'd give me some education eventually, and you did not.

And today, I find out that your nutrionist told me the wrong information.  There is no finite amount of carbs I can eat.  It is based on insluin dosage, which should not be standard for every meal, you twat.

If I seem angry, I am.  speaking to someone who knows what the shit they're talking about was refreshing.  I realize it's a teaching hospital, which makes me more nervous for the future of our healthcare.  

Unless you have a gunshot wound, a bleeding ulcer, or collapse within a ten yard radius, I suggest you look elsewhere to treatment and education.  And if you're going into labor, take a tip from the good Gov. Palin: fly somewhere else.

Liveblogging the Endocrinologist

Just kidding.  But will have updates later.

Tangentially

The title of this entry is one of my favorite words.  I try to use it as often as I can.  It works for this post...tangentially.

I had to go to the zoo today for an anth lab, and decided to bike there.  It'd been a while since I rode anywhere of substance.  So when Connecticut Ave became steep, I wanted to die.  I was breathing incredibly fast - yay for my other chronic illness, asthma - and had to walk up.

This is beginning to effect a lot of parts of my life, and I need to stop that.

Post Script:  Observing tamarin monkeys only made me miss indian food.

For those keeping track

International Politics Exam

Environmental Policy Midterm Exam

Economics Midterm Exam

Biological Anthropology Exam

Iraq Paper

My blood sugar is beginning to stabilize.  Schoolwork, after missing a week of classes, has not.

Evolution de la Cabinet

I apologize if this blog has become a never-ending rant about sadness pertaining to food.  If you would like a happier food blog, I highly recommend seriouseats.com.

There was a time in which my refrigerator and pantry were lined with breads, cheeses, fruits, cookies, starchy vegetables, and specialty items.  It's different now.  Relics of the past remain, taunting me until they've gone bad.  Now, stacks of sardines and sliced lunch meat fill that space.  Frozen meals and almonds have replaced baguettes and brie.  Herring has replaced hummus.  Pistachios have replaced pastries.  

I don't feel sick.  And I don't like acting as if I do.

How are you?

The question which found its way miraculously into the title of this entry is one I'm frequently asked.  It's a hard question to answer.  It can go one of two ways, really:

-Well, I'm hungry all the time, feel a bit like a pin cushion, and am uncertain as to how I am going to keep this up for the rest of my life.

or

-Good.

The more correct answer is somewhere in the middle: I don't know.  I don't know how I am because never have I felt sick.  Only the people in white coats told me I was sick.  

If you want to know how I am, I'm not the best person to ask: consult my blood sugar tester.

Wisdom

While in the hospital, I was approached by an older man in a white coat.  A former Doctor who was now solely a teacher, softspoken and stolid, he asked if a med student could do a routine history and physical.  I was there, so what the hell, might as well, donate my body to science while I can be thanked for it.

The student got most of the numbers wrong.  It was cute.

At the end, the teacher thanked me, and said something that stuck with me.  "I was told this by a mentor 60 years ago," he began.  "The way to live a long life is to get a chronic disease and take really good care of it."  

That was the last I saw of him.  But not the last I thought of him.

Associations

There are a number of famous diabetics.   The two most famous I can think of bring with them far different associations.  Halle Berry and Osama bin-Laden.  

Not sure whether I'm closer to a Bond-girl or a terrorist.

John McCain would decide the latter.

Annals of the Absurd

In case anyone was keeping score, it takes a newly diagnosed diabetes patient three months to see an endocrinologist.  

Forcefield

In 2004, I was at the protest of the Republican National Convention in New York City, and someone wielded a sign, made famous by Jesse Jackson that I will try to recreate in blog text.

We Need A No-Carb Diet

Cheney

Ashcroft

Rumpsfeld

Bush

Oh, how much better that diet is...

It's a tough transition, going from eating whatever one wants to being confined to a certain level of certain foods.  For the past 6 years, I've watched what I ate in order to lose weight, which I did successfully after being a pudgy little kid.  It was never low calories or low carbs - it was low fat.  I now have a diet which allows all the fat I need, but limits carbs.

Carbs are in everything.  Milk, juice, pasta, rice, BBQ sauce, chocolate, etc.  Everything you can imagine with the exception of *most* vegetables.  

Without the normal level of carbs, I've been feeling empty.  In the movie ANTZ (yes, another Woody Allen reference, albeit a bad movie) Woody Allens' character stumbles upon Insectopia, where there is all the food he could want.  It is a picnic.  He goes up to a gaping sandwich, goes to take a bite, and is blocked by 'some sort of forcefield'.  It is saran wrap.  As I stare longingly at my pantry, my hand trembling from the shock to my system, it's as if there's a forcefield between me and the breads, the pastas, and my beloved Chococats.  

Food is difficult.  It's one of my greatest joys in life (not being a glutton, but eating good food) and now it's rationed.  

But on the bright side, the radish industry is going to boom with my diagnosis, and I can only imagine what will happen to Big Green Bean.

I need to find a diabetic cow.

Company

I'm beginning to realize that since this is not a live blog (who do you think I am, Politico?  CNN?)  much of this will be out of sequence, or downright stream of consciousness.  I'm not sure if the term 'poetic license' applies here (much the same way it didn't to my idiot high school AP English teacher who claimed it after writing the phrase 'The Church runned the school') but for this, being partly therapeutic for me, I'm going to go ahead and do what I want.  Have a problem?  Write a counterblog.  Or post a comment.  

A few alterations to the way my four day hospital stay progressed could have had drastic effects.  Besides thus-far not needing to hire any malpractice lawyer, something that kept me sane, and even made me enjoy myself, was the presence of friends.  I can't really describe how great it was to see any of the number of people walking towards my room.  The knowledge that they took the time to come and sit in a dreadful place was euphoric for me.  I have no words for the gratitude I feel, so I won't try to find them.

414A

Imagine, for a moment, that you are lying in a yellowed room partitioned with beige curtains.  There are no windows.  There is no clock.  Time begins to slip away from you.  

In the ER, there is a non-medical waiting room and a medical waiting room.  But at 3AM, I was wheeled, semi-conscious, to a room on the medicine floor.  

I was still grappling with the diagnosis when I woke up to a tray on the table beside me.  Breakfast.  Now, I knew very little about the disease I'd been told I had, but I was pretty sure, from pop culture references and general common sense, that french toast, maple syrup, a processed fruit cup, and cranberry juice was probably not the best diet for me.  

There were other mini-fiascos.  Mentioning no names, machines to test blood sugar were called insulin injectors, general information about diabetes that would have been undone on Wikipedia in a manner of minutes was disseminated, and there was a general feeling that nobody was really talking to me.  It took an overheard conversation in the hall to confirm the basic idea that this was Type 1.

I shared a room with another male patient.  I know not of his problems, but they were severe enough to keep him in bed, mainly immobile, and unable to eat.  He had what appeared to be a fiance, who came often.  My interactions with him were as follows: Introduction, and my picking up a fallen BlackBerry that came under the dividing curtain.  I wasn't looking for a Bucket List type relationship with my hospital roommate, and I left without one.

Throughout the days in the hospital, the doctors seemed stumped as to how much insulin I'd need.  I seemed to get different amounts, different boosters, and still, a chart of my blood sugar would look like a roller coaster (I speak, of course, of an old-timey one, like the one Woody Allen lived under in Annie Hall, not a Six Flags barrel-roll.)  

What hath carbs wrought?

Is there any word uglier than "blog"?  Perhaps "moist".  I'd rather be a blogger than a moister.

It's really great to meditate on the way one can get diabetes, if get is even the right word.  One can live a life of debauchery, eating deliciously unhealthy foods, smoke, drink, and not exercise.  Or, a slip in a genotype that skipped a generation and suddenly you're a slave to the water fountain.

But I'm not bitter.

It started about three weeks ago with just that: thirst.  I kept having flashbacks to the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" (the first, and only, enjoyable one) when a pre-octopus evil captain kept speaking about an unquenchable thirst (inquenchable?  reminds me of the John Adams v. Thomas Jefferson argument of unalienable v. inalienable.).  

It peaked one Saturday night after a night of good food, good drink, and good friends in Manhattan.  I had to get out of the train at 53rd and 3rd and find a drink and a bathroom, no easy feat at 3A.M.   When I got back to Queens, I got in a cab, and went to tell an older Russian woman cabbie where I lived.  I couldn't form words - it very literally felt like my tongue was made of cotton.  I finally got home, and put my mouth under the faucet.

It was the next day that the possibility of having diabetes was put into my mind.  Two conversations being had independently made the diagnosis.  It was hard to balance my perpetual cynicism with my chronic hypochondria.  The middle ground was to diagnose myself with some psychological disorder that tangentially had all the symptoms of diabetes.

I rode my bike to my school's student health center.  A monotonous K Street building surrounded by normative northwest District fixtures - Starbucks, lobbying firms, and frail trees in neat little boxes - I waited until the doctor would see me.  As entertaining as it may have been to hear a one sided conversation of a woman making an appointment about a recently contracted STD, and the necessary steps she would have to take before coming in to be check, my mind was racing.  

I could describe the visit, but it was as plain as the facade of the building.  The doctor never used the word diabetes, interestingly enough.  She seemed to have the same problem my neighbor to the west at 1600 Pennsylvania did: her facial expressions didn't seem to match what she was saying.

The next eighteen hours would be spent in the ER.  It all seemed to blur together.  So here are the highlights:

*Blood Gas tests are the worst things in the world, second only, perhaps, to taking medical tape off that's been on your arm for two days.

*Being in the ER, contrary to numerous television shows, has all the excitement of a Brookings Institute Report.

*I was given magnesium.  A minute in, with no nurse, I became incredibly hot and flushed.  When the nurse answered my call, she said she'd not told me because, typically, it only happens to women.  Great - emasculate someone who is already in a gown and flip flops.

*Someone who works at Cosi who, presumably, is around both the food we eat and sharp objects, is HIV positive.

I'll leave it at that for the ER and the post.  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.

Scratch that.  The conclusion of diabetes, I assume, is death.

This could fail

Most blogs are read simply by the blogger and their mother.  I fear that one of two things will happen with this.  Either that prophecy will be true, or I'll just quit.   To be perfectly honest, the name of the blog was why I rushed to blogspot, not out of any sense to share my story (icanhazcheezburger.com).  But lets see how this goes.