My Diabetes Story: After The Win Over COVID We’ve Discovered My Diabetes, But Fight Abhi Baki Hai!

I have a confession to make.

I was always confident that I would go into my old age half bald and itching away to glory. You see, I not only resemble my dad physically, apparently, I even react to situations with similar responses as his. Hence I would be the natural inheritor of his gene pool.

Never did I think that my mom’s genes would make their presence felt. I was very sure diabetes wouldn’t embrace me like it did my mother.

This year, during the second wave, my entire family came down with COVID. My husband and I had it real bad, but we made it through thanks to the diligent care given by our two (nearly grown up) children who were barely out of their own COVID infection.

I realized how close it was only when the doctor who saved us visited us this Diwali and kept saying, ‘it was touch and go with you two!’

My son realized something was fishy when one of the doctors while going through my blood reports kept asking him if I had a sugar problem. She raised the red flag of co-morbidities. We kept denying it because seriously there was no chance of my getting diabetes. I had beaten the gene pool odds you see!

Little did I know!

But test after test the sugar levels kept spiking up.

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We explained it to ourselves as a spike due to the excessive intake of the heavy dosage of steroids I had taken to make it through COVID.

Three months passed. My ratings didn’t abate. I gave myself a month of sugar abstinence and walks.

The next test was a nightmare. The H1ABC now read 10.2.

It was time for me to face the truth. I was now a confirmed diabetic.

Like my dear mother.

My first reaction was of sheer horror. This couldn’t be happening to me. It wasn’t supposed to.

It took me two days to accept and settle into my new state of sugar watching.

A week later, I went to meet an endocrinologist suggested by a dear friend.

To say he was shocked would be an understatement. That I wasn’t under any treatment even with my readings being so bad. I explained my best, saying, we thought it was a Covid spillover.

Team effort set up

He immediately put me under medication and hoped I would undertake major lifestyle changes. Cutting carbs, throwing junk out and walking like hell.

My blood sugar level had to be monitored daily.

To ace any disease, it has to be a team effort. In my case, my husband, my partner has diligently punctured my finger daily, measured and tabulated the sugar levels.

It was a month to a day yesterday and I’m happy to report that I have begun to show good results and my medication has reduced.

But it is a long long haul yet before I can exhale

I’m positive though, I can ace this new challenge too.

I say that it has got to do with my blood type! I’m A+ always positive.

I diligently stick to the course, generate newer goalposts, reward myself for small victories and never forget the larger picture.

I’m a TB survivor. A COVID veteran. Now a Diabetes fighter.

Come on life. Serve me your googlies. I’ll take you in my stride Because I’ve got only this one life to live queen size!

Because Kahaani Abhi Shuru Hui! (the story has just begun).

Image source: the author

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