Plastic Fruit

The next week was filled with doctors, IV’s, lessons on how to stick an insulin needle in a piece of fruit, and then in my own belly. Instructions on how to poke my own fingers, put blood on the little strip, and to know what the numbers on the screen meant.

All along I felt like my entire well being, my health that I took for granted before, was completely reliant on the nurses and doctors that were around me poking and prodding me with whatever device they had at the time. 

“Is this my new life?” I kept repeating in my head throughout the week. “How am I going to be able to do this? I have the ACT this weekend, and tennis? What am I going to tell my coach? Can I still play tennis?”

The confusing part to me, was the one part of this whole ordeal that I had some control over, what I was going to eat. The plastic fruit I was taught to carb count on seemed juvenile and stupid, and I just didn’t want any part of it. I mean, I felt like a kindergartener, learning how to eat and count. I listened to the nice nurse showing me the size of a fifteen carbohydrate apple, and how many carbs one piece of whole wheat bread had. I wish I would have taken this more lightly than I did. My type A personality went numbers crazy, this overwhelming thought that I would no longer be able to just eat what my body wanted, I would have to calculate, count, and analyze this every time I was hungry, was a thought that kept spinning in my head for the duration of my stay in the hospital. This was the part that would soon get way more complicated than I would ever know.

(As I spent the week sleeping, my mom slept on the hospital chair next to me, awake for every 4 am finger prick, every 8 am shot, and so on. I am not sure she actually ever slept the entire time I was in the hospital. )

When I got home, having a little more energy and having my mind thinking a bit more clearly, I did what anyone would do in my position would do… I googled. I googled everything from “what would happen if my sugars stayed high my whole life” to “how many carbs are in a bowl of soup” What about a bowl of ice cream? Wow, probably won’t be having that again. “How many carbs are in a banana? Really? That sucks. I went down the list of things I liked in my head, slowly eliminating as I went down the list. This was the start of what would years later, weigh heavy on my mind, heart, and body.