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While walking around the INOVA Fair Oaks Hospital last week doing this test and that scan an unwelcome knot began to coil in my stomach on top of the other obnoxious symptoms I've been experiencing.  But unlike the unidentifiable pain in my back, twinge in my abdomen, all encompassing fatigue and plummeting blood sugars, I know without a doubt the cause of this gnarling, rancid, snaking sensation: sheer dread.

The idea of more white coats, of being hospitalized and generally of being sick again makes me thoroughly miserable.   I'm 27 years old for goodness sake!  I'm supposed to be spry, youthful and energetic - you know, able to leap tall buildings in single bounds and all that jazz.  But, as sorry as I am to admit it, ever since I got sick in 2011 there has been a persistent shade of gloomy-blue in my life...  I'm sick and, until they discover a cure, I'm not going to get better.  Of course, it's unfair of me to say that I haven't gotten better with the use of my insulin pump and incessant glucose testing because the fact is that I no longer have DKA and my diabetes is not getting worse.  However, when my chronic condition regularly gets me bumped from "I'm sorry you are sick, but wait your turn" to practically having "STAT" stamped on my forehead the moment I walk into medical buildings for efficiency purposes it's a little disheartening.

Now, I fully appreciate that my doctors are thorough and that they never feel comfortable labeling anything as "just a virus" or whatever because of the possible worst case scenario, but dagnabbit people! With absolutely none of the tests coming back with clear results, my GP advised that I come back into the hospital on Friday to be rehydrated.  When I flat out said "no, I can drink my own dang water, thank you" she then requested that I at least follow up with the following morning at their immediate care clinic, which I thought perfectly reasonable.  But then, on Saturday morning, when the next two doctors to examine me found zero trails to follow they seemed to be pursuing the medical equivalent of an invisible yet mischievous pooka down random rabbit holes... worth it? I think not.

Now I might be stubbornly calling the hunt off too early and there's still a possibility that I may have to eat some hospital version of humble pie sometime in the next couple weeks, but without a reason for more poking and prodding I'm done being the poor, pitiful patient.  If it's something as simple as a virus, then sleeping on the couch a while longer should put me right.  If it is more than that, then, well, I'll have some more definitive symptoms to follow and we wont waste our time trying to track down something it's not.

With that, it's nap time.  GV in the crook of my arm and GW in "the boat."    

Wait and see.

I apologize for the hiatus in posts over the past two weeks. Between my shear bewilderment over the Boston Marathon bombings and a horrific stomach pain that has had me sleeping since Monday I've been quite without comment.  But after having spent the majority of yesterday and this morning at the doctor's office running tests, it's about time I get back to it.

So Monday afternoon while driving with HB to get landscape rock for our yard my stomach and lower back began searing with pain.  Leaving him to load the 4 tons of river rock in to the truck, complete the landscaping and generally do everything that involves moving, I've been on the couch and barely eating ever since.  Finally opting to go see someone about it yesterday, the doc found my bilirubin levels to be high and ordered a complete blood panel and abdominal ultrasound that was completed this morning.

Thus far we haven't learned anything from the lab results and the ultrasound found nothing conclusive, but we have learned one thing: with an underlying, chronic condition general practitioners seem to automatically assume that diabetes is the cause of all of my problems.  Now, if my HgA1C was high and I truly had "poor diabetes management" as they accuse me of, then I'd nod my head in silent resignation that I've made myself worse with apathy. However, since my A1C is stellar and I test my sugar so often I have perpetual bruising from my lancets I refuse to sit passively by and take undo criticism of my self-care.  I mean at one point this morning the sonographer went so far as to ask if my stomach pain is because of "improper use of my infusion site" - perhaps a logical question if it wasn't in a completely different abdominal quadrant from where the pain is!

The thing is, while diabetes could be a problem and is regularly a bitter annoyance of mine, right now my diabetes is a reassurance that something beyond the norm is wrong and here's why: Before I began feeling ill on Monday, my blood sugar was completely stable, but especially over the last two days my bgs have been falling lower and lower without a relevant diabetes explanation...  Yesterday afternoon my glucose levels were low (63 mg/dL) so I corrected with a handful of saltine crackers.  But when I checked my blood sugar a few hours later at dinner and it was even lower (61 mg/dL), so I adjusted my basal to 70% of it's usual amount to account for being sick and I skipped a meal bolus for the minimal food that I ate.  Assuming this would set me up for stability via hyperglycemia over night since I had to fast for the ultrasound, I checked my post-dinner two hour postprandial, my bg was still low at 68 mg/dL... I grabbed a quick correction snack, adjusted my basal rate even lower to 50% and went to bed.

You'd think with half of my normal basal rate and a correction I'd have woken up this morning with my blood sugar well into the 100's - if not higher - but nope.  For the second day in a row, my blood sugar was down even farther to 41 mg/dL!  Since I couldn't even have water before this ultrasound I couldn't correct with either solid or liquid carbs, so at 7 AM I suspended my pump and removed it with the assumption that my sugars would naturally go up without my persistent basal dose.  Makes sense, right?
Well, yes, but it didn't work. Three hours later at 10 AM my blood sugar had merely gone up to 48 mg/dL... not awesome.

I've since had breakfast and found a temporary fix to my hypoglycemia, but that's beside the point.  The silver lining of my exhaustion, pain and zero appetite is that my diabetes is providing another quantifiable symptom to go from.  Typically when diabetics get sick the body releases extra hormones that cause a decrease in insulin efficiency and therefore causes unavoidable hyperglycemia,  but for whatever reason, something else is going on right now.  How obnoxious.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes to pass.