My grandmother was clumsy. My mother was clumsy. I have inherited this gene. And as I get older, the consequences become more dire. Last Wednesday's incident leads me to consider living the remainder of my days in a hamster bubble.
I was leaving a meeting at my church and walking to my car with something in each hand when I tripped and found myself airborne and parallel to the sidewalk. With my hands full, and not as much reaction time as the slow motion vision of the incident going on in my head would suggest, my chin was the first thing to hit the sidewalk. As I started to try to get up, I realized my chin was bleeding heavily and that my mouth and jaw had several significant injuries.
Thankfully, someone I knew came along who had been at the meeting with me. He walked me back into the building where a friend helped me clean up and then took me to urgent care. No stitches were needed, and x-rays showed no broken bones. Follow-up with the dentist on Thursday showed that a disk which cushions the bones around the intersection of the right side of my jaw was intensely swollen and inflamed, making it impossible to open my mouth more than a crack. I am still unable to chew, and brushing my teeth is torture, but with rest and a variety of treatments the problem should continue to resolve over the coming weeks. Then the dentist will be able to fix the broken teeth.
I'm guessing you're feeling badly for me but wondering what this has to do with diabetes. Read on:
As I lay on my sofa Thursday morning, everything hurting, the phone rang. It was my husband calling from work, who had conferenced in my daughter calling from the nurse's office. In tears. "I'm 385 and I was 300 an hour ago and corrected it and we're doing jump rope for heart today so I've been jumping rope and my blood sugar won't go down and I didn't want to bother you and I know you're not supposed to talk, but I don't know what to do and the site looks pretty yucky and .... what should I do???"
I took a deep breath (one of us had to) and mumbled through clenched teeth, "Sounds like it's probably the site. Do you think you can do it yourself? I'll come down there if you really need me to but if you think you can do it, now's the time to try."
"I think I can."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"O.k. Make sure the nurse sits with you and watches. Call me if you need to. It's o.k. And if I need to come down there, I absolutely will. But I definitely think you can do it."
When she did her first site change a couple of weeks ago, I never would have seen this particular need coming. I envisioned a site falling out on a day trip with another family, or a failure during a night with grandparents while her dad and I were off doing something fun. But here we were, me looking like I'd been in a prize fight and in intense pain on the sofa, and my husband an hour's commute away at work.
It took only 2 more phoned in questions to accomplish the task (I don't have to prime again, right? Can I leave the old site in until I get home in case it's a gusher?). By lunch time she was in the 200's and by mid-afternoon, back under that 200 line.
As our little family reconvened around the dining room table that evening, and I sipped my pureed lentil soup through a straw, my husband decided the day needed a happy ending. It was the warmest evening yet, with the hope of spring in the air, so I was loaded in the car and we headed to our favorite ice cream stand. My daughter enjoyed her first italian ice of the season. My milkshake was the most calories I'd consumed in 36 hours. It was a well-deserved treat.
