Infection of hope, despair, tragedy and love

Dear Blood Sugars,

This letter has been a long time coming. I thought you would change, I had hoped you would change, but no, you just kept throwing your nastiness my way, and I can’t take it anymore. You are the worst kind of friend possible, not even a friend really, more like a frenemy. One minute you’re putting on a face acting like we’re the best of pals, laughing with me and working with me to score readings of 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, but then in a matter of a heartbeat you turn your back on me, don’t even offer up an explanation, you just leave me to suffer with the failure of 14.0. Well Blood Sugars, let me tell you, I’ve had frenemies like you before, and just so you know I got sick of them – fast. So dear Blood Sugars, if you want to continue to be in me life, if you want to go out for dinner with me, confide in me, laugh until we cry, you darn well better start shaping up is all I’m saying. Because this friend can only take so much.

Sincerely, Princess of Pavement.

Yesterday morning after a night of restless sleep (and by restless I mean no sleep) I pulled myself out of bed a half hour before the alarm went off with a nasty cold filling my head. I could barely stand up my energy was lacking so. One minute I had the chills, shivering and teeth clattering, and the next, I was burning up sweating through my clothes. My eyes were hot, my nose was stuffed, I was hacking up phlegm grodies, and sneezing to beat all hell. Needless to say, I crawled back into bed for the day – unlike others who will remain nameless who did NOT stay home from work last week when they were ill, wheezing and hacking over everything, me included. I think these people think they’re being heros by coming to work sick, but really, all they are are germ spreaders causing the rest of us to fall ill; they’re the furthest thing from heros. But I’m not bitter, oh no.

And because I was sick, that so-called friend of mine Blood Sugars yo-yoed from one extreme to the next, which was really frustrating because I had just gotten them back to perfection days ago. As I’ve mentioned before, Blood Sugars are sensitive, anything can set them off. And this cold set them off like you wouldn’t believe. I went from 2.3 to a rebound of 17.1. I got them down to 7.4, but they quickly went back up and hovered around the 12.5 mark for the better part of the day. For those you who don’t have diabetes, extreme blood sugar fluctuation like that is like getting kicked in the stomach over and over again until you’re so sore from the beating you surrender, laying on the ground in a fetal position, not able to move. Not fun.

I tried to take in as much liquids as I could, I slurped up a nice salty bowl of Lipton’s chicken noodle soup, which is more noodle than chicken, got as much rest as I could, and when I couldn’t sleep anymore, I stuffed Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet into my laptop for a dose of brain getaway. I love that movie! I’ve watched it umpteen times since it came out in 1996, but it’s been at least a few years since I last viewed it, and watching it this time I was quite enthralled by how young the all-star cast was, which not only included Leonardo Dicaprio (heart) and Claire Danes (double heart) but also John Leguizamo, Paul Rudd, Paul Sorvino and a familiar-looking, yet unrecognizable Jamie Kennedy. I think what makes this movie so brilliant is that it’s a timeless tale of hope, despair, tragedy and love in a modern setting, but with the language and theatrics of days of yore. Just what the doctor ordered 😀

What are your cold comforts?