I have too much sugar in my blood
I have insulin resistance
UH! Type 2 Diabetes!

I have too much sugar in my blood
I have a broken pancreas that isn’t creating insulin
UH! Type 1 Diabetes!

Type 2 Diabetes
Type 1 Diabetes
UH! Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA), aka Type 1.5 Diabetes!

We always joke around that it would be just my luck to end up with a super rare and complicated disease, one that requires Dr. House-style intervention. Gill is convinced I have some sort of super-betes, while Ed has been telling me I probably have both kinds, aka Type 3.

So, about that ..

Let me catch you up on what’s happened since my last update. I’ve been feeling better, but my blood is all over the damn place (literally and figuratively). I was told to get myself some peein’ sticks, and they’ve been showing that the bad news is all up in my everything – basically, I’m consistently in the “get to a damn hospital” range. Sad!

I met with Diabetes Man at the hospital on Wednesday for some education. The plan was to learn all about diabetes and how to treat my specific kind of diabetes, but .. well, we don’t know what kind it is. My blood and pee don’t make any sense. I need to take the official “What Diabetes Are You” Buzzfeed quiz, but that can only be requested by your family doctor, which I do not have. Without that diagnosis, I can’t get the insulin I seem need, without which – and this was stressed to me a number of times – DYING WOULD HAPPEN. Which is weird, because Type 2 diabetics – which we all assume I am because look at me – don’t typically require insulin. It was all very complicated and I kept cracking bad jokes that didn’t go over very well because Diabetes Man was too frustrated by my enigmatic nature to appreciate my acerbic wit. We made a deal: I would test my blood at specific times in the day and my pee first thing in the morning and text him the results, and he would confer with Dr. Awesome to find out why the former would say I’m fine when I am so clearly not fine in the slightest and also what do we do with a problem like Kimli (I like to imagine there was singing).

Cut to yesterday morning. Blood is stupid. Pee is stupid. Every goddamn thing is stupid and also I am exhausted. I texted my numbers to Diabetes Man, ate some Cheerios like a toddler, and tried to work. Around 1pm, Dr. Awesome called me.

So, about all those crossed wires and completely opposite advice/diagnoses from Dr. Awesome and Dr. Nice Shoes ..

No one told Dr. Awesome I had been admitted to the hospital. 

Dr. Awesome called me last Friday afternoon, before I was discharged from the hospital. I had assumed the call was because he had been brought up to speed on wtf is going on, which was the wrong assumption to make: the timing of the call was a COINCIDENCE. He had no idea I was literally on a hospital bed at that moment. Complicating matters even further (because me), the whole opposite diagnosis thing was because he wasn’t looking at the results from my overnight stay – he only had info from the week prior, BEFORE I went into DKA.

Still with me? I barely am, and this is my life now.

Having cleared that up, Dr. Awesome said I needed insulin, and I needed it ASAP. Ed drove me to the doctor’s office in North Van, and I was formally issued some insulin pens and instructions on how to stab myself with them. He also talked about my actual, current test results, which are showing weird things that make him think I’m actually a Type 1.5 diabetic – which is a real thing that actually exists and is not just a cute joke we’ve been making – AND that all of this *might* be due to an undiagnosed bout of pancreatitis (which would explain the high red and white blood cell count from the first blood test that started all of this shit). It’s too early to tell, but if my pancreas bounces back, all of this might go away. It might not. In the meantime, I’m on a tiny daily dose of tummy insulin to make my body process the sugar in my blood (like it’s supposed to do when it’s not being a fucking slacker). What comes next? Your guess is as good as mine.

None of this is officially official without the test, but all signs are pointing towards Type 1.5 diabetes. There’ll likely be a ton more back and forth as things get sorted out, including the medication aspect: we’re not sure if the peanut butter was making me sick at all, as it could very well have been coincidentally timed with my descent into DKA. I don’t know. What I DO know is that I’ve had to cancel my trip to Seattle for next week, because if the insulin isn’t doing the job and I start feeling all acidic again, I have to go to the ER immediately .. and call me crazy, but I just don’t want to try out American healthcare at this point in my life.

I’m super glad we’re getting somewhat closer to a diagnosis/solution, and that Dr. Awesome and Diabetes Man are both helping me through this. Still, it’s hard not to throw myself a little pity party now and then – it’s been a rough month. I was really looking forward to going to Seattle, and I’m tired of feeling like a ticking time bomb of rotten cells. I’m worried that I’m missing too much work for appointments and emergency consultations. I feel guilty as hell because I screwed up Ed’s birthday weekend, his actual birthday, plans he had yesterday, and potentially work-related stuff for next week. Every little twitch and twinge makes me think I’m about to drop into a funky fresh coma of phat death. Stresses: I have them.

Not sure what I’m going to do with all the character this is building, though.