Sunday night, late. All weekend I have been a participant in a slow rolling train wreck that started late last week. Thursday night I had a couple scotch and sodas. That was the first thing.
Friday morning I had really high blood sugars. Like in,the 300s. So I went in to my insulin set and drew 15 units like the doctor ordered. I administered it and went back to my day. About thirty minutes later I felt a sudden onset of a very strange sensation, like falling, feeling sick and sweaty and a sort of ‘not really on the world’ feeling. I have been diabetic long enough to suspect blood sugars every time I feel weird. So I checked my blood sugars. I had gone from 350 to 42 in one easy slide. By then I had to remain calm while somewhere deep inside me I panicked. Low blood sugars will suck you right through the floor. I wanted to avoid the attention getting gurney and ambulance ride to the hospital so I calmly asked my wife to get me some guava juice, two please. I guzzled the juices and threw some honey in for extra measure. You just can never be sure just how much sugar you want to get in so I figured that two small containers of juice might be just the beginning, but I also had to wait to see where things went. I waited ten minutes and didn’t fall over. Then I checked my sugars. I was at 152. I went to see what happened with the insulin dose and found a bottle of pure insulin in my kit rather than the 70/30 the doctor had ordered for me. That must have slipped in from one of the hospital visits. Okay, so I was safe but I felt like I had done two whirly whirly rides at a cheap carnival. So I did what I always do when I feel like that, even if it was just the first time, I went back to bed. I sort of slept for about an hour. Then I woke up and waited to see what I felt. I felt a surge of energy, that would be the insulin and sugar charging me up, I guessed. I felt strong enough to get up and explore the house so I did. I found that I felt a bit queasy, had the jitters and wasn’t going to pass out. This was all pretty new for me so I just waited and watched. I tried to get some housework done but I never really felt like I should be moving around. So I sat down and then went and laid down. The queasy feeling never went away for the rest of the day. After 3 Friday afternoon I got up and dressed and tried to accomplish what I wanted to get done that day. I did a little light tree trimming, whacked up the limbs and tied them up for pickup. I cleaned some in the side yard then considered what else needed to be done. I puttered around in the backyard. Then, because I was hot and sweaty I had a beer. I felt pretty good if a little jittery. I went inside and piddled around on the computer and watched a movie with my wife.
Saturday morning was sort of a continuation of Friday because I still felt jittery. But I got up and mowed the lawn, did some tidying up of the tree limbs cut Friday. I did all that while my wife got ready to go out for the morning. We were running the errands that accumulate over the week. But I noticed that I was very tense, rather withdrawn, kind of edgy. I thought about this for a while. I had written some emails to some friends Friday evening about events in the news and the emails were kind of harsh. Saturday morning I realized I had thought about those emails all night, not really sleeping. Put together it seemed like I had a deep mood change towards becoming withdrawn and even darkly moody. I realized when I talked it over with my wife that we were both having a problem with the cancer over the last year, and more so the month of March that I spent in the hospital having my Whipple and the surgery for the post op infection. I realized we were both experiencing the after effects of a traumatic experience. From previous events in my life I had realized that after such events you feel detached from and even a desire to abandon your friends and sometimes your own family. I don’t really know the mechanics of it but I had experienced the same thing when I was younger and had scarlet fever. I had almost died then, I was about 9 years old at the time and for a few months afterwards I wanted nothing to do with my siblings or my family, preferring to be alone and away from it all, far away from it all. I recognized that feeling this past Saturday morning. I was very concerned that with both of us going through the same emotional crisis things could get a bit weird. I discussed this with my wife and it actually made us both feel better to talk about it and recognize that what we were going through was caused by the stress of recent events. That feeling of stress related tensions and the insulin overdose put me on my defenses the rest of the day. I wasn’t sure what was causing what and I could barely identify my own symptoms, but I relied on caution to get me through the day without incident. Late Saturday afternoon I called an acquaintance in New York that I met in the hospital. He was in the hospital for his third pancreatic cancer related event, this time they had taken all of his pancreas. He was nervous because his weight was dropping at the rate of several pounds per week. We discussed diet, attitude, activities and even how his wife was taking it all. He was eating normally, as much as he could, but he was still losing weight. His wife was infinitely depressed about it all. It was not at all a cheery phone call. That brought home even more the seriousness of my situation.
This morning I had slept poorly once again. I was awake at 4 am. Cancer and chemo rob you of your normal sleep cycle so you plug away as best you can. You sleep when you can and hope your exhaustion doesn’t ruin your whole day. I was pleased that we had an early morning thunderstorm. Those always relax me, make me feel like the day starts clean and sparkly. I looked forward to a better day. I made breakfast for me and my wife and we talked about the way we felt about the stress and our reactions to it all. She wanted to go to the fabric store to get a ribbon for her straw hat. I had made three brooches at a glass fusion class and they turned out quite well. She wanted to put one of the brooches on the ribbon on her hat. I went along with her because I have a few projects that required materials from the crafts section. Again today I still felt jittery, and unbelievably hungry. This had started Saturday afternoon. I had made a smoked chicken for dinner Saturday night. I ate most of the chicken myself, along with several snacks. This morning after a big breakfast I ate three tacos and then a hamburger for lunch. Then I suddenly felt tired. That is to be expected because I was up at 4 am and by then it was wearing on to about 3 pm. By the time I got home I was dead tired. I made dinner and set it in the oven to slow cook while I went to take a nap. Two hours later dinner was ready. But I could barely eat. I ate like a bird then I started to feel like I had the flu. My bones ached and I hurt. Watching TV I found that food commercials made me slightly nauseous. I took my pain pills on schedule but they didn’t touch the pain. Then I felt hot and was actually running a slight fever. Great, on top of everything else these flu like symptoms show up.
Right now I feel a little tired, kind of sore and just wrung out. Friday’s insulin overdose, Saturday’s realization that we are going through post stress reaction from my cancer and operations, and today I am tired and feel like I am getting the flu. I just can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings. Meanwhile I have to figure how we are going to deal with the emotions we are going to experience over the next several weeks as the reaction to the stressful past year goes by. I honestly expect that anybody who goes through a Whipple procedure will experience this reaction in some form. You have to be in dire circumstances for them to peel you apart and work on the very core of your body like that. Once the crisis and the operation is done you are left hurting and your body changed forever. That does something to you that likely you have never even anticipated, let alone experienced. Your best approach is to know it is going to happen, and it is going to happen to members of your family to some extent as well. It will be different for everybody, by degrees of severity, from nothing at all to severe emotional chaos. Try to bring medical help in as soon as possible after the surgery. My wife will discuss this emotional reaction with her therapist to get a handle on it. Me, I will go through my cancer center and let them know I am having stress related issues.
On the positive side it seems that in retrospect some of the jitters I have felt this weekend are because my pancreas has finally awakened after all this time and is putting the right chemicals into my body. Not in very measured amounts to be sure but my system is getting regulated again. For one thing my bowel movements are more normal, after 18 months of being rather ugly. That means I am digesting my food better. That might explain the surge in eating, and the fact that when I ate this weekend I craved protein. The real proof will be if I get more energy next week. Up to now I had been pushing myself one day and sliding for the next day or two. Before I got sick I could just push myself every day, but I had to slow down lately because I was pretty much so sick that I was going to die. Now I have to work at getting my energy back. And some muscle mass. I thought I might want to fill all this loose skin with muscle fiber rather than fat, a fantasy to be sure but still a goal. I tried to pick up the weights I once worked out with and do a curl or two. I could do one curl. Just one. Before I got sick I would do twenty five to thirty and that was my limit. With more energy coming from a more functional pancreas, putting some muscle mass back on becomes possible. We’ll see if my hopes come true. Tomorrow, maybe the next I hope I will have some energy.
