Category Archives: Women’s Health

Emotional Reasoning

Posted in Mental Health, Women's Health by

I haven’t always listened to my emotions. In fact, there was a time I suppressed them.

I grew up in a household of boys, my poor mother and I alone in the chaos of male destruction. But as much as I revere my mother, I was a daddy’s girl. Besides the whole Oedipus complex, I’m starting to understand why. My mom was rational, and my dad, like me, was emotional. But since he was a man’s man, he never showed it except when he became angry. My dad was the type of man to have teary eyes at the end of movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and Armageddon, but only if he was alone.

The first time I saw my dad cry was when I was ten. I followed him into the basement. We had just returned from vacation, and we came home to a dead dog. The Yorkshire Terrier was 12 years old and had gotten his collar stuck in the holes of our picnic table in the backyard and choked himself to death. His name was Tiger, and he had been my dad’s wedding gift to my mom. My mom had wanted to put the dog in a kennel while we went camping, but my dad decided to keep him at home and have a friend come by after work each day and take care of him. When we came home to a funeral (the dog was rather loved among our extended family), my dad felt responsible.

So when I went downstairs and saw Tiger’s motionless body in a cardboard box, I couldn’t make the connection. This wasn’t Tiger. It was just a stuffed animal that looked like Tiger. But when my dad saw the dog, his guilt overcame him, and he started choking on his own sobs. I ran back up the stairs then, terrified. I’d never seen my dad lose it like that, and I vowed I would never do the same. Continue reading →

Drinking to Undo Diabetes

Posted in Diabetes, Type 1, Women's Health by

I hadn’t been drinking that long before I was diagnosed with diabetes. Suffice it to say I was a good girl who usually followed the rules. But upon turning 21, my friends started winning late-night happy hours at downtown Cincinnati bars. I attended many of these happy hours, and with the first two drinks being free, it didn’t take long to make it to five.

Two weeks before I was diagnosed at 22, I was at a downtown bar with my boyfriend at the time, Reed. It was crowded for a Thursday night, mainly due to these happy hours. Reed and I had just returned from attending church with his family – it was the Thursday before Easter, and even though I no longer practiced Catholicism, I adored his family, calling them my own, and willingly subjugated myself to the torture of mass to spend time with them. I even wore purple (the color of lent, a season of repentance for Catholics).

I was nursing my second beer when Reed returned from the bar with two White Russians (he was a huge Big Lebowski fan) and two Bud Lights in hand.

“Thirsty?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Happy hour ends in 10 minutes, had to make the most of it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. I wasn’t planning on getting drunk that night, but you know how the story goes …

Two weeks later, on April 24, I was admitted to the hospital for a severely high blood sugar (690). I was supposed to spend the evening with my boyfriend and his aunt and uncle. Instead, I was alone in a cold hospital bed with a dead cell phone and a disease. Within 24 hours, the doctor and nurses got my blood sugar down to 200. Although I was advised to stay another night, I pleaded with them to let me go, promising them that I was responsible and would take care of myself. Continue reading →

What Do You See?

Posted in Cost, Diabetes, Type 1, Women's Health by

I squinted at the Word document on my laptop while I drowned out the noise of Xavier University’s campus center. I sat back in my cushioned chair within the study area of the third floor. It was my last finals week as a senior in college.

I increased the document size to 200 percent. There. I could finally make out the words of my American Literature class essay. Had this diabetes diagnosis changed my vision forever? I had somewhat poor eyesight before being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes a week prior, but I wore contacts on a daily basis. It never interfered with everyday tasks.

Second to my father, I am the only one in my family who needs glasses. Now that my mom is older, she’s turned to reading glasses, but both my younger brothers have perfect vision. I started wearing glasses at 16, just so I could see the white board in class. When I competed in cross-country races, I ran blindly (well not really, I could see in front of me just not at a distance).

In college, I made the switch to contacts. My pupils are so large it is impossible to drive without sunglasses, and the frames I propped over my regular glasses to shield the sun weren’t doing the trick. What a difference contacts made! But then four years later, they didn’t help at all. Continue reading →

Numb

Posted in Diabetes, Exercise, Type 1, Women's Health by

It happened again. The numbness in my feet. First my right foot went, then it crept past my ankle to the lower part of my calf and repeated with the left leg.

I was almost home, just made the ninety degree turn around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The rich condos of Key Highway approached me on the right. The sunset illuminated the green water to my left. I wondered if I could finish the rest of my run on numb feet.

This was the second time in a month, the first time in 10 years.

It first happened in high school at the end of cross-country season. I was training for the next season, running on ice and snow in the Highland neighborhoods of Louisville, KY. It only happened when I ran on pavement as opposed to the green grass of cross-country. But there was no bluegrass to run on when winter arrived.

I managed the winter season on numb feet. But with track season approaching and my problem ceasing to disappear, I approached my coach. I was far from the fastest runner on the team, but that season I had trained harder in the hopes of surpassing my goal of a nine-minute mile.

My coach didn’t care that I wasn’t the fastest, that I would not contribute to the team’s ranking come state finals. He cared that I did well. That’s why after each race when he announced who he thought the MVP’s were, sometimes they would be slower runners who had shown determination and major improvement even if that improvement was the difference between a 30 minute and 28 minute 5K. We loved and respected him for it.

I hated running before I started cross-country in high school. So why did I join? Peer pressure. My friend at the time asked me to. But being a part of that team changed my perception of running. I love it till this day no matter how many injuries I sustain. I don’t know what I would do if I ever tore my ACL. Knock on wood. Continue reading →

Screaming Babies

Posted in Diabetes, Type 1, Women's Health by

Tracy-Year-One012-webSomehow, I have found myself surrounded by pregnant women—the neighbor down the street, my supervisor across the hall, former college friends—everywhere I turn, people are having babies.

At 26, that should make me happy, right? My family asks when I’m next. Are there marriage talks in the works with my boyfriend of three years? Yes, it’s the first stable relationship I’ve had, one that even survived 21 months of long distance, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for marriage.

I don’t even know if I want to get married let alone have babies. I feel like a family slows a woman down, that if I want to accomplish anything in terms of a career, I must put the idea of a family on the shelf and hike it up the chain solo. But everywhere I turn, women are asking how can they do both? Can’t we have it all? What if I don’t want it all?

A week after I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I met with my nutritionist for the first time. Continue reading →