What happened to my immortality? Give it back, you bastards...!

Been away in Scotland for a week, hence the lack of anything said.

Had another blood test before I went, got the results yesterday. Fasting blood sugar was lower than last time, but some other result (you can see how excited I am by this whole thing) was still borderline. Also, my cholesterol was a bit high – not massive, but high all the same. Hardly surprising, I suppose for someone who lives on red meat…

So now I’m on pills. And I’m on pills for the rest of my life… WTF, how the fuck did that happen? I am supposed to be immortal. Other people are supposed to be ill and I am supposed to be indestructible and live for ever.

I never go to the Doctors. I have never had a day off sick in my life. I have missed a day in the office owing to food-poisoning and the resultant desire to be close to certain facilities, but I still worked from home.

I am disgustingly healthy. I don’t do being ill.

Yeah, right. Not no more, sunshine. Live with it.

Actually, no, don’t “live with it”. That is a sort of quitter-ish attitude. I’ve got to live with the (pretty obvious, anyway, when I come to think of it) fact that I am not immortal, but I don’t have to live with the idea that diabetes is something that I can do nothing about.

I can and will change my lifestyle yet further to ensure that it makes the minimum amount of difference to the life that I want to lead.

Some of the “I must change my lifestyle” is altruism, but some of it is also fear. I have a known a number of people in older age who have lost toes, legs and their lives because they didn’t look after their diabetes properly. That really doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather lose out on a few treats now than my toes in 10 years time. That would really suck.

Learning to ride a horse with only one leg in my fifties would be by no means impossible, but all-in-all, I’d rather pass on the necessity altogether.

Scotland was good. I ate too much, drank too much and smoked a shit-load of cigarettes. All of these things are soon going to be denied to me. Alas and alack. Well, not denied, necessarily, but seriously restricted, so at the moment I am making whoopee before the dietician and the Diabetes Nurse get their hands on me (curse you, September 3rd!!).

This weekend is the last battle re-enactment of the season, to I will probably have my last gaspers there. I already started moderating my drinking seriously at the last one two weeks ago, because I was finding that it played havoc with my energy levels.

It’s quite odd to discover that you can have a good time without getting pissed. Not that I ever get completely hammered – well, not very often at all – but getting pleasantly pissed has been a part of a jovial social occasion for the last 25 years.

Still won’t be able to dance though. The only way that I could ever get round to dancing was by getting pretty wrecked, so it looks like dancing will now be off the menu for ever. That’s going to take come coming to terms with….

Ok, I’ve come to terms with it now. No more dancing, ever. That’s cool. Every cloud has a silver lining.

So, bugger all exercise, bugger all self control and bugger all something else (I just felt that the structure of the sentence required a third “bugger all”) until September 3rd. Then reality and responsibility kicks in.

(Well, ok, you know as well as I do that I’m going to fall by the wayside on occasion as much as the next man, but I shall try to be responsible and sensible, and, in all likelihood, something else ending in –ible, too.)

What joy...

Had a call from the Doctor's surgery. I have "mild diabetes", whatever the heck that means. Woot!

I have ana appointment tomorrow at 10.20, so I will learn more then.

15st 7lbs this lunchtime. However, I have eaten a big boiwl of porrige and several cups of coffee first, whereas normally I weigh myself "empty" first thing in the morning.

More tomorrow.

Blood Test

Had the blood test yesterday.

Was I big and brave about it? Was I heck...?

I was very surprised by how restrained I was on the way there. Normally I start shaking like a leaf when I know I am on my way to a needle, but this time I retained my calm until I was actually in the nurse's cell.

Then the cold sweats started...

I shamefacedly admitted my phobia to the nurse, who suggested that I lie down on the bed thingie rather than try to have it done sitting in the chair. It's easier not to look like that.

So, like the incredibly brave little soldier I am, I lay on the couch, bravely holding out my paw. Until she tied the strap thingie on to make the vein stand up, that is, whereupon my brave little arm disappeared under my yellow, trembling body like a rat down a hole.

This happened two or three times before she had even had a chance to pick up the syringe. Then she started to play dirty...

"Shall I go and get the other nurses to hold you down?" says she.

Ouch, Pride versus Phobia. A battle of the titans.

I could just picture it. A shouted summons across a crowded waiting room "Girls - can you come and help me hold down this patient. He's too scared to have his blood test..." A squadron of nurses troop in, sounds of screams and struggling ensue, then the door opens and the queue of waiting patients, ready to be sympathetic to the sobbing ten-year-old who has been subdued, are flabbergasted to see a hulking forty-two year old six-footer slink shame-facedly out of the torture chamber.

It wasn't much of a contest, actually. Pride won with a knock-down and submission in pretty short order. Lie down, paw out, other arm over eyes, think of England...

But nurses always have a way of getting revenge….

“You are sure that you won’t move, aren’t you? Because if you move at the wrong moment, it could be really serious…”

Oh great, thanks a bundle. That is bound to relax one….

So there I am, lying so rigid that a fakir would have no problem suspending me between two stools at head and foot, arm pressed so hard on my eyes that I am seeing stars and then it happens – the tiniest, most pathetic little spark of pain in the history of medicine.

So, that hardly hurt at all. Don’t know what I was worrying about. It was all fine…

Was it bollocks! It mattered not one jot that the pain was insignificant. I was still lying there stiff as a board whilst she faffed around.

I suppose it took, what, less than 10 seconds from start top finish, and it felt like had it taken three seconds longer then I have gone into physiological melt-down.

I wouldn’t, of course. When it comes down to it, one copes when one has to, and one endures what one has to when one has to – but phobias are weird things. They are incomprehensible to those who are lucky enough not to suffer from any.

My fear of needles is utterly inexplicable. If I get a splinter or a thorn in me, I am quite happy to dig it out with a needle. The pain, which is usually much longer and greater than an injection, bothers me not one jot.

But, injections? Injections which I know aren’t going to hurt that much. They scare the shit out of me.

Go figure…

(At present, I am not even entertaining the worries over what happens if this blood test does reveal diabetes. I can lose sleep over that if and when it happens…)

Refund

Well, well, well.

I have recieved a letter from the company saying that a cheque for £4.99 in respect of ProductX is on its way.

How nice - and how suprising....

Actually, I feel a bit guilty now... I didn't really want a refund. I mean the product was crap, but I wrote the letter because I like being pompous and verbose, not because I actually needed my £4.99 back.

I'm terribly English, don'tchaknow, I hate making a fuss...

Mind you, I saw a version of the ad on telly the other day and it had the words "May need frequent scrubbing" superimposed on the bottom, and I'm sure that they weren't there when I first saw it...