Not So Sweet

About three years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes.

There are two kinds. Briefly, Type 1 diabetes is where your body doesn't produce the hormone insulin so you have to have insulin injections.

Type 2, the kind I've got and the kind that they're always going on about these days, is where the body does produce insulin, but either doesn't produce enough or doesn't react to it properly. The blood sugar is high but the sugar can't get to the muscles to be used. So the owner of said high blood sugar feels tired because not enough energy's getting to the muscles: and the surplus sugar coats itself all over everything inside you - eyes, nerve endings, for example - and basically wrecks it all slowly.

Type 2 can be controlled by diet and I did this for a while - all that healthy diet advice is basically what diabetics should eat - and I did. But it wasn't enough and my blood sugar was always too high. So they put me on Metformin tablets which are the standard treatment for Type 2 where diet alone isn't working.

You can, apparently, take up to six of the 500mg Metformin tablets a day. They started me on one. Blood sugar still too high. It should be no more than seven: mine varied between nine and twenty. Far too high. Makes you prone to all sorts of nasties: heart attacks, strokes, leg ulcers, blindness, to name but a few.

So they upped my Metformin dose to two per day.

It was a while after this that I noticed I was feeling sick a lot, like when you're pregnant and have morning sickness, only without the pregnancy bit. Lots of different kinds of food became distinctly unappealing. I kind of got used to it. I lost nearly a stone in weight. I liked that. Finally it got so people were saying "have you lost weight?"

But the weekend before last the feeling sick got so bad that I really couldn't do anything except lounge about, going "ergh I feel sick" to anyone who would listen.

In a belated flash of insight, I read the Possible Side Effects of Metformin. Oh look, nausea. Oh damn.

So I stopped taking them. And within twenty-four hours I realised that I hadn't just been feeling a bit sick for weeks and weeks, I had been feeling ABSOLUTELY BLOODY TERRIBLE for weeks and weeks. And suddenly I felt normal again. Yippee!

But, of course, my blood sugar wasn't normal, it was flaming fourteen point eight, more than double what it should be. (Fourteen point eight WHAT? I hear you ask. Well I don't know. Doctors don't tell you. It could be furlongs per fortnight for all I know. But anyway, fourteen point eight when it should be seven is Not Good News.)

I test my blood sugar by sticking a special needle in my finger with a special measuring device. It's always a surprise that it hurts. "OW!" I go in astonishment, every single time. Then it counts down to give you your result. Five! Four! Three! Two! One! FOURTEEN POINT EIGHT AAAAAAAARGH!

So I went back to the doctor and told him this. He was very young and his communication skills were excellent, which pleased me greatly since I help to train and assess medical students' communication skills. He suggested that I should start again with just one Metformin tablet a day, see how it goes and come back in a fortnight to report back on the state of my nausea and the highness of my blood sugar.

That was on Friday. Now it's Monday. I feel thoroughly sick and my blood sugar's still fourteen. It's enough to drive me to treacle toffee.