Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Eating, Drinking, Fighting, Fucking and Other Fun Things

The other night, I wanted to eat a pound of cheese fries and drink five beers.

Wouldn't that have been great?

Instead, I went home, ate some Spanish cheese and soy crisps, and went to bed mostly hungry.

I am so tired of being hungry. Also, tired of needles. Also, tired of nerve-damaged feet. But having feet - nerve-damaged or not - is better than not having any feet. So really, I'm lucky.

But my feet are a constant reminder that things are not OK with me, that I'm sick, that at some point in the far future, I may lose some of these very lovely toes. On the one hand, the constant tingling or twitching on the bottoms of my feet and toes is a hateful thing. It keeps me from being able to pretend that everything's fine. On the other hand, it keeps me from be able to pretend that everything's fine, and so keeps me from eating like everything's fine. I know what's at stake. I can stay pretty focused.

And pretty hungry.

I called Dr. S today, and we upped the insulin again (I'd been upping it on my own between this call and the one before). We've gone from a starting insulin dose of 18 in the morning and 10 at night to 30 in the morning and 28 at night, which says something about why I felt so freakin' shitty after the initial leveling-out period.

I'll be seeing Dr. S. on the 19th, and unless this new uppage does some kind of wonderful thing, I'm going to ask that we move me back to the other insulin regimen, because this one just isn't working with any kind of consistency. My sugar spikes in the afternoon while at work and again at night while I'm lying in bed, so I lie there and listen to my heart pound hard and often irregularly in my chest for an hour before the insulin brings me back down.

Also, really fascinated with the fact that I've lost what used to be a really high sex drive.

Not that it's gone, mind you, but it's not what it was. That's what shitty sugar will do to you (and yes, that's another reason I really, really want to get the insulin sorted out). I do realize that, being single, there's not a lot to do with a sex drive if I did have my old one back, but you know, I *like* looking at people. I *like* sighing over people I find attractive. One of the reasons I hated being on the pill was because I never ovulated, and lost that monthly spike in sexual interest where everyone I met just looked so beautiful...

I miss that.

I don't know, sometimes, how much of my exhaustion with the whole thing is physical, and how much is mental. It's just the constant nagging thing, trying to get everything to work out right. I want to get this under control before I start boxing classes, which I wanted to start in August, but which I may push back until September (which is as far as I'll push it. After that, it's "suck it up" time).

Jenn had some friends in town this weekend, and the four of us went to a restaurant, and Jenn and I both ended up in front of the sinks in the bathroom at the same time, and when I looked at us both in the mirror, our difference in size was really apparent. I looked absolutely gargantuan next to her. Not fat, so much, though I obviously weigh more, but just... big. I am just big. When I stand her in front of me and line up her left shoulder with mine, her right shoulder hits the center of my chest. Granted, Jenn is just little, but man, seeing myself look so huge and intimidating reminded me again that I live in a society that doesn't seem to have a place for me. If I'm supposed to be a little objectified woman who exists to be looked at, well, I'm pretty bad at that... But you know, boxing? When I was boxing, I felt like my body was just right, like I was built just for this. I had this fantastic, powerful body that was actually really *good* for something. I didn't feel too-big or freakish. I felt just right.

And that's why I need to get back to it: beyond the fitness part, the self defense part, it's something that makes me feel better in my skin, that makes me feel like I'm not too big and bulky and awkward. No, I'm powerful and intimidating and free.

Also, really hungry right now.

I may have to get in the habit of making something like egg salad or chicken salad and bringing that to work to snack on. The idea of eating plain hard boiled eggs isn't that appealing, and you can only eat so much beef jerky before you get sick on it.

I think a lot of my problems with the change in eating isn't *what* I eat - I'm actually eating a wider variety of things now that I'm diabetic - it's *how much* I eat. I got so used to packing in some ridiculous amount of calories every day, living on popcorn and nutrigrain bars and going out to lunch and having chocolate cake twice a week, that changing that mode after a year of, "I can eat anything I want and still lose weight!" I'm pretty startled to find myself subsisting primarily on cheese and almonds. I mean, gawd, I'm a former binge eater, too, and one of the big reasons I resolved never to get any kind of stomach surgery was because I love to eat sometimes, just eat until I'm exhausted. I mean, that's what holidays are for. I enjoy the celebration. I'd broken the binge eating cycle before I got sick, but the, "Let's celebrate and eat!" thing was still OK, I could still do it.

And, I guess I still can, only with, like hot wings and omelettes.

Dammit.

I actually crave the low sugar days (few to none, right now) when I can eat one piece of chocolate or even three whole graham crackers! Or jellybeans! Or! Or!

Sometimes, I'm just tired. It'll get better. It'll get easier. It's only been two months. When I figure this whole thing out, when I find an insulin regimen that works and fine tune it, everything will be OK.

I know it will, but it doesn't mean it makes it any easier not to lust after cheese fries and multiple bottles of beer.

I get sad, sometimes.

10 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that you're sad, but you have every right to be. The way you seize your life and set yourself on the right path is inspiring-- a little wobble now and then shouldn't worry you.

David Moles said...

Chicken tenders are almost as good as cheese fries. Especially if you put cheese on 'em. And there's mozzarella sticks.

And I think you're just the right size, for you. If society can't deal with that, dammit, that's society's problem.

Kameron Hurley said...

Funny you mention the chicken tenders... At home, I've been living off these chicken tenders that Trader Joe's premakes; I just have to heat them up. I feel guilty taking them to work as snacks, mainly because they seem like a dinner food.

They are very tasty with BBQ sauce. I'm trying to figure out how to make my own so I can save some money...

Anonymous said...

Hey, do you mind me asking what your vegetable/legume intake is? I know fruit and root veggies are considered high in sugar, but just reading this entry is making my stomach hurt.

Kameron Hurley said...

This is what I eat, generally:

Morning:
1 waffle or peice of French toast
3 pieces bacon or 2 eggs
1/2 cup blueberries or other berry

Noon:
half sandwich
watered down tomato soup (cuts carbs to one serving instead of two)
carrot sticks

Night:
Some green vegetable (like broccoli, asparagus, green beans)
Some form of meat (chix, fish, steak, etc)
Some form of carb (1/2 cup pasta, small potato, or 1 piece bread)

Snacks I can have: string cheese, almonds, honey roasted peanuts, soy crisps, other cheeses, lunch meat, vegetables, or low carb yogurt (6 carbs) with some form of berry if it's a good sugar day.

I also lift weights for 20 minutes every morning and do 30 minutes of cardio 4 times a week. And I walk about an hour a day as part of my workday routine. So, I could probably be less hungry if I wasn't doing as much. But I am, and I like my muscles.

Most fruits are too high in sugar. The lowest sugar fruit is blueberries, then strawberries and rapsberries.

Orange juice and bananas are killers. Apples aren't great either, but if you swap out one carb serving at lunch, say, take out the piece of bread, you can have an apple with the soup instead of the bread.

See, the problem right now is, I should be able to eat 3-4 servings of carbs per meal (so, two waffles for breakfast, a whole sandwich for lunch, some yogurt for dessert after dinner), but my sugar is so high, I can only get away with 1-2. This is another reason I'm thinking I need to switch back to the other insulin. On the other insulin, I could actually eat and be satisfied. And with this insulin, I can't if I want to keep my sugar anywhere reasonable.

Anonymous said...

Okay, my stomach hurts less. (The wrongness of your sugar staying above 200 on that diet is difficult to articulate in words. Do Type 1's ever take pills, or is it all strictly insulin?)

I've heard about the bananas and the fruit juice. There was an article earlier this year, I can't remember where, about a study done on obesity and Type 2 rates in children drinking fruit juice.... turns out the rates are pretty much identical to kids drinking soda. I don't know if that was attributed to the removable of all the soluble fiber, or to the addition of corn syrup.

I think increasing your muscle mass is probably a Very Good Thing for this. Ditto the cardio.

Kameron Hurley said...

Sadly, no, they don't make pills for Type 1s. My dad is a Type 2 (this was the mysterious missing link the doctors kept asking me about when I was first admitted to the hospital. They wanted to know if there were any other diabetics in the family, and I was like, "No, no one!" and they were baffled, and kept asking. Then I was on the phone with my dad, and discovered he was taking pills to manage Type 2 diabetes. Also, turns out my sister was borderline with gestational diabetes when she was pregnant. Genetics, much? Me being a Type 1 was just a roll of the dice away).

I'll always be dependent on injectable insulin, whether with needles or hopefully, someday, a pump. They have a sort of insulin inhaler you can get now, but insulin delivered that was is only about 60% as effective as the kind you shoot up.

And, yea, I have no idea what the problem with the sugar is - I shouldn't be coming out this high while eating and exercising like I do. I thought maybe I had a bad bottle of insulin, but when I switched it out with another one, the results were the same. So I'll just keep upping it until my appointment next week, and then tell Dr. S. I want to get back on the Lantus-and-Novolin combo.

I ate the exact same diet (only, about 4 more carb servings every day), and had nearly perfect sugar numbers while on the Lantus. I was hoping this new one would work because it meant moving from 4 shots a day to just 2.

But shit, if it means having better sugar, I'll go back to 4 shots, cause this is fucking ridiculous.

Zan said...

If you're looking for something to cut down on the creepycrawling tingles in your feet, I can recommend Cymbalta. I started it a month ago and I've only had two episodes since and they're much briefer and not nearly as severe. I've got nerve damage in both my hands and feet from Lupus and the Cymbalta is the only thing that's ever helped.

Anonymous said...

Wait, so having insulin-resistant diabetics in your family tree puts you more at risk for developing pancreas-failure-type diabetes? That's crazy.

(So is 4 shots per day, ugh. But I guess it's better than the alternative.)

Kameron Hurley said...

Yup. A bad pancreas is a bad pancreas... it's also related to other diseases where your body attacks itself, so if you've got a family where somebody's got Lupus, you're also likely to get a type 1 diabetic in there somewhere.