....but now sometimes they continue to bleed.
When a diabetic is hospitalized, the prick your fingers every hour on the hour to test your blood sugar.
Luckily when it's been that bad, I've been in a coma.
However, my small pretty girly dainty OMG her ring finger is a size 4 how cute hands are the size of pro baseball player's catcher mitts when I wake up. And on top of that, they're black and blue, and yellow, and orange, and red, and pretty much any color but flesh colored, bruised to kingdom come. And I'll be honest, I've cried over these monster monstrousity looking hands praying to god they will go back to their normal delicate size. It usually takes about 2 - 3 weeks before I can where my wedding ring again.
While out of the coma, they would check my blood sugar 3 - 5 times a day. Usually it was before I ate and went to bed unless there was low blood sugar..When there was low blood sugar it became a waiting game of here drink or/and eat this and we will be back in an hour. Turns out if my blood sugar doesn't go over 90, I can't take my nighttime. And they would pick whichever finger to thier liking and squeeze the beejeebus out of the finger. I couldn't feel the tip of my left pointer finger for months because one of the nurses squeezed it to death just to get a sufficient amount of blood. And what's worse is that they start running out of spots.
Then you would come home, and you couldn't find a spot. Error reading, a ton of them. You get stressed out because blood won't come up and if you do get blood, it would be miniscule. (Yes, I'm starting to use bigger words, although I have to spell check which is frustrating, that will be another post) I would have to prick three different areas hoping for the best 4 times a day. It's frustrating, overly frustrating to the point that you want to scream at your finger, "Come bloody on!" One day I errored three times in a row and started crying. And it's all for a stupid number. A number! A number that influences the next 4 hour of your life. Sometimes as I wait for the meter to calculate I find myself rocking back and forth thinking, "Come on 99!" like I'm at a bingo hall and need that one number to scream out Bingo and win $500. It's the bane of my existence, that number. Grrrrr....
I suppose I could have upped the level of my lancet to a 2 so it penetrates deeper, but I'm stubborn like that. The fact that I've been a diabetic for over three years, use only my fingers for testing and am still a 1 is amazing. I heal at a remotely rapid rate. So I'm not exactly ready to move my dial. I'm stubborn and proud and I know it.
Also, I only use three fingers - my middle, ring, and pinky. I don't know why I don't like using my pointer, must be a personal preference. I also fear using my thumb due to the whole vein thing being inside there. I cut it open with an exacto knife when I was in 8th grade working on a stupid science experiment where you have to create a house and hope to death it's sturdy to stay up during natural distasters that the two science teachers created. The guy whose house stood next to mine was flattened due an unfortunate landslide (the teacher pretty much dropped a huge rock on his house). Back to the thumb, it bled for about 3 hours straight and at the young age of 14, I was pretty sure I was going to bleed to death. I vaguely remember being in the kitchen screaming that I was going to die and asked Mumika why we weren't going to ER to save me. So yeah, I don't prick my thumb at all, but the nurses do.
Four months with stress and about 30 error readings later, my hands have healed! I'm still on the first setting and boom, blood pops out with hardly any effort. Now the only problem is, some spots tend to continue bleeding after I'm done with the testing. While I was in the hospital, I was very proud at the fact that my fingers hadn't started doing that.....until now. Right now its only the left side of a pinky and the right side of a ring. And I always know when it will decide to continue to bleed because I can feel the pain of the lancet in my phalanges. It goes *ping* radiate.
So yay for healing, non yay for bleeding. Maybe I pricked that spot too much and it's worn down. Is that even possible? Must be. Is this how calluses start on the fingers? It better not, that would suck. Poor fingers, they have gone through so much.
Diabetes, first it takes your pancreas, then it goes after your hands. Oh and it likes to try and kill you every now and then. Diabetes, it keeps you on your toes.
No comments:
Post a Comment