In which I get over myself, for unfortunate reasons

Well. I’m not sure what to say here about my visit with Mr. Brooklyn because it was so packed with intense, unexpected events that my anxieties re: Charlotte fade to nothing in comparison to the non-Charlotte-related things that actually happened. That’s not meant dismissively; the anxiety was a big part of the trip, even though Mr. Brooklyn’s reactions to the pump proved to be much as the kind commenters predicted below. He was utterly unfazed by any aspect of my bionicness—so much so, in fact, that I wondered if he was pretending. Nope, he wasn’t.

So: three cheers for Mr. Brooklyn, yay yay yay! But to my surprise, I nevertheless still had to overcome my own hang-ups about how I feel about my pumping self (damn). I thought they’d evaporate once I knew he was okay with dating a cyborg. In a twisted way, I guess I should celebrate my independence: my conflicted self-esteem is dependent on my OWN feelings, not those of some man! Ha!

Hmm. A dubious victory at best. Anyhow, the aforementioned intense, unexpected events, beside which the body image issues seem pathetic and laughable, are all off topic for this blog except one: Mr. Brooklyn appears to have prediabetes. I say “appears” because we made this discovery through the scientifically invalid process of testing him with my meter. Home BG meters are nowhere near as accurate as laboratory bloodwork. I’ve read, though I can’t recall where, that a home meter can be off as much as 5-10% in normal circumstances, i.e., when the meter is working as it’s supposed to. So it’s an unsound practice, generally speaking, to randomly test your loved ones and conclude that they have medical problems based on those results.

That said…we tested him a lot over several days—fasting, postprandial, etc. And he was well into the prediabetes range for whatever test we did (see the above link to ADA info for those ranges) every time except one, which was slightly into the diabetic range. Given that my meter and test strips appear to be working fine, I think there’s a serious likelihood that he’s prediabetic. In fact, even subtracting a 10% potential error from every test we did, each result still falls into the prediabetes range. Not good.

Those familiar with type 2 know that finding out you have prediabetes is a hell of a lot better than the alternative, which almost inevitably is finding out—often years later, with the onset of complications—that you have the real deal. Prediabetes is a sort of metabolic godsend in that if you take action, through exercise and diet modification, you MAY be able to “prevent or delay” (that’s the ADA again) the onset of type 2. So Mr. Brooklyn has here a warning sign, and if he responds by changing his lifestyle in significant and rather painful ways, he might not develop type 2. That makes him a lot more fortunate than the 16 million Americans who already have it.

OK, there’s the logic. Now the emotion: I don’t feel fortunate and I don’t feel that he’s fortunate either. I am SICK of diabetes affecting me and my people and zillions of other folks as well. I am pissed and frightened and tired. He doesn’t deserve this any more than I deserve my type 1. I want it all to go away. Right now.

I also want, with terrifying fervor, to control his response to this situation, to ensure that he does what needs to be done in spite of how horribly difficult it will be. I can’t do that, of course. All I can do is support him—from very far away—and hope for the best. And realize that we'll deal with it together, if it comes to that.