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.)
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