Has it really been three weeks since my last post here? Say it ain’t so! But as the ballplayer replied to the young fan, “Afraid it is, kid.” No nefariousness lies behind my absence; I’ve just been terribly busy. This will not end anytime soon, actually: full plate, candle burning at both ends, insert your own hoary metaphor here. But personal blogging will continue. Indeed, one of the activities currently keeping me from blogging is an entire overhaul of my personal blog. Making progress, and hope to have it up and visible soon. In the meantime, carry on as best you can; I’ll be with you as soon as circumstances allow.
Clarence: I always heard my pa was crazy; I never met the man with my mom, it was the drugs.
Foreman: Any siblings?
Clarence: Got a brother, pretty much raised him on my own.
Foreman: Inspirational story. He doin’ time, too?
Clarence: Hey. He’s a good kid. Don’t go judgin’ what you don’t know.
Foreman: How’s his health?
Clarence: I haven’t heard from him since I went inside. Spent 16 years with him, changed his damn diapers. Can you imagine your whole life bein’ about the worst thing you ever did?
Foreman: You killed four people. Somehow, making mac and cheese just the way he wants kind of loses its significance.
From House M.D., episode “Acceptance,” originally aired 9/13/2005
It’s natural and understandable, I think, that diabetes complicates the way one thinks of food. For many, to some extent or other, a certain wariness colors the culinary outlook. Food becomes – if not an outright enemy – then certainly an object of suspicion, a possible source of metabolic disaster. Can I eat this is the spoken question, often followed by the unspoken Without dying, I mean? Not to overstate the situation, but, well, there it is.
Short of that – and given enough time, after that – comes a period in which one may think of food less as a source of enjoyment and more as a means of manipulating one’s blood sugar level (and ‘merely’ fueling the body). A little better than regarding food as foe, yes, but it’s not exactly fun, either.
Given a little more time, though – and perhaps the right recipe – one might recall the pleasures of eating even within a new diabetic landscape. This is all to say that the EatingWell recipe for Braised Paprika Chicken is good not only for the body’s chemistry, but for the soul. And I have to say, it came not a moment too soon.
Accompanied by roasted broccoli florets and pearl couscous.
As recently as four or five years ago, I enjoyed 20/20 vision and was something of a dick about it. As the years rolled by, I more frequently found myself the only non-bespectacled attendee at social gatherings, and my smugness was beyond measure. At length, I noted that my eyes seemed to tire more easily after hours of staring into a computer display at work, and M marched me to the optician’s for fairly weak lenses which I reluctantly – and seldom – wore. Denial, river in Egypt, etcetera.
Still later, my near vision – reading distance – deteriorated to the point where I could no longer avoid wearing the specs. I chalked it up to middle age and its myriad indignities, and blundered on through life until I collided with diabetes last December. The metabolic disorder announced itself in several ways, most notably in an severe overnight degradation of my far vision. Anything beyond a six foot radius from myself looked pretty much like the Mount Rushmore image in the accompanying Ron Paul poster – hazy and out of focus, not unlike Ron Paul himself. Unsettling, to be sure.
So it was off to the doctor, tests and meds, the assembly of the D-Team. Even before the official diagnosis, I understood that my new vision woes resulted from the vastly increased level of glucose in my blood: big blocky molecules of the sugar essentially blowing out the tiny, overmatched capillaries in my eyes. After about nine days on the standard issue anti-diabetic drug metformin, my blood glucose level dropped to the point where my far vision sharpened to normal – and again, the noticeable change was overnight.
I still had substandard reading vision – which seemed to have worsened a bit – so it was back to the eye doc for a new and more powerful prescription. The specs with their multi-focal lenses were uncomfortable at first and I had some trouble adjusting, but a week or so later found me wearing them even when I did not need them to read.
And then something happened which I did not expect.
As I was browsing the web one evening last week – a time of day when my sight was always at its weakest and most in need of correction – I was startled to find that (one) I had forgotten to don my glasses upon coming home from work earlier, and (two) I was viewing the laptop display with no problems whatsoever. It was as though my vision had returned – on its own – to 20/20, or something in that area code.
And that’s where things stand even now. I haven’t worn my glasses in days, and haven’t needed to. My thinking is that my pre-diabetic vision – not quite right at close quarters, but not quite so bad that I felt compelled to use glasses – was actually a symptom of my, er, pre-diabetes. This suggests that my blood sugar levels were above normal well before last December – which makes sense to me now – and that this was the cause for my earlier vision problems. Once I began to address the blood glucose levels, the vision had a chance to correct itself – in full (or close to it)?
Maybe, baby. Or maybe not. Time will tell.
In the meanwhile, I’ll just be watchful, as it were – and perhaps less smug about good vision.
My God, but I hate Democrats.
PS: Should probably expound on that. Reader MB as quoted at Talking Points Memo does it for me:
What really bothers me about the Dems’ epic collapse, more than anything, is how easily they gave up. Not even on a political level, but on a human level, it boggles the mind. [...]
This legislation was historic. A monumental achievement that would, and I still hope will, save thousands of lives and save thousands from medical bankruptcy. They were weeks, if not days, from passing this epic legislation and with one stumble, they throw up their hands and declare that the bill is doomed. How can you work so hard on something, spend so much time and man hours, get so close, and at the first hint of trouble, walk away like that? Where is the courage of their convictions? They have none. They’re cowards.
To me, it’s like getting ten feet from the summit of Mount Everest, tripping on some ice and declaring that not only can you not make it any further, but that surely you are doomed to die of frostbite on the mountain. Well, if you just lay there feeling sorry for yourself, surely you will. But if you dust yourself off and keep walking, you’ll probably be fine.
My blood glucose readings over the past few days, measured in milligrams of glucose (sugar) per deciliter of blood. It’s early days, of course, but I think I’m slowly getting a handle on my reactions to foods in general and carbohydrates in particular. Previous spikes and plunges in blood sugar levels are giving way to more gentle rises and falls, and within the target range of glucose levels I’ve set for myself.
I’ve been experimenting with late-evening snacks. Many diabetics experience a rise in blood glucose levels while sleeping; this is, as I’ve understand it, the result of the liver reacting to low glucose levels (no food eaten during sleep > no glucose production > falling levels of glucose) by releasing stored-up glucose into the bloodstream. A snack with moderate levels of carbs, eaten before bed, gives the body enough fuel for some glucose and so forestalls the liver dumping still more glucose into the system. Low-fat yogurt seemed to do the trick last night; I awoke to a reading of 101 mg/DL. I’ll try it again tonight to see if I can repeat the result.
Sigh. Always the experiment; never the control. 
On scanning recent dispatches from Popkulturelandia, one gets the feeling of living in a land at war, with calls to arms sounded every hour, or at least as often as gossip sites update. Which war, you may ask (as there are several going on)? Why, child, I mean the Late Night War, or so it has been called. I won’t bore you with the origins of the conflict, or its current status and body count, or even the latest revised assumptions of how it will all end. You probably understand these things as well as I do, and possibly better. No, instead I think I’ll bore you by detailing the ways in which I don’t care about any of this.
Again, and for clarity: I don’t care.
Because: I don’t watch late night television. That is, while I may watch TV late at night on occasion, I don’t spend that time with any of the shows caught up, even peripherally, in the Late Night War.
I am not a fan of Conan O’Brien. Tried him; didn’t like him. No animosity involved. Coco’s just not my cup of joe, never has been. And just between us, that Andy Richter guy didn’t work well for me, either. What’s that? You liked Andy? Srsly? Well. That’s why God made chocolate and vanilla, I guess.
I am not a fan of David Letterman. I’ve seen him now and again; could probably count on one hand the number of entire episodes I’ve watched of his show. If I found myself on the proverbial desert island with non-satellite television and one choice of program from the Late Night Warriors, I’d pick Dave, but I’d rather choose something from another category altogether. The DIY Network, perhaps, or the Food Network, or even Investigation Discovery (partial to The FBI Files, truth be told). But wait, those are satellite channels, so never mind.
I dislike Jay Leno. Nothing personal. I’m told that he works hard. He may be a great guy, hail-fellow-well-met and such, but I find him utterly unentertaining. If given Leno as my only viewing option on that desert island, I’d probably swim for it. It can’t be that far to the mainland, can it?
There it is, then. I have no skin in the game when it comes to the current late night contretemps, and I have to say that I feel pretty smug about it, and well above the fray. If only you felt the same.
So if I had a child, and that offspring came to me with wide wondering eyes to ask what I did during the Late Night War, my reply would be:
Child, I went to bed.
And my kid would be so proud of me.
This was taken by M last week. Baxter has pretty much claimed the pad atop the radiator as his private domain. Jack is watching for interlopers outside. Roxy is watching the interloper inside.
