Taking insulin shots at school

Taking insulin at school was a big problem since I had to get up in the middle of the class, walk across the entire room, jump over bags and poke and nudge my classmates in the process and then ask the teacher if I could leave for you-know-what (and here I would mumble so low I wonder if my teachers ever figured out where I went). During the first few days of school, my headmistress had arranged for a room where I could go and take my shot in peace.

Now, this room was next to class 8-A, the sworn adversaries of my class- 8-B and there was a connecting door between the 2 rooms with a tiny window on the top. Any kid standing in the 8-A classroom could easily see what was going on in the deserted room. I remember one day when I went there and was spotted by a few guys in the other class I was bolting the room from within. Naturally their curiosity was raised and despite the fact that there was a teacher in the class, they spread word and so everybody got up to see what the fat, dumb was doing. I saw them too and asked them to go away through rather rude gestures. When they did not relent and continued to crane their necks (I was getting used to a lot of craning of necks), a brilliant idea struck me. I dragged the chair I was going to sit on right next to the connecting door so the idiots would not be able to see anything. Smart girl! But then they were smarter and stood on their chairs to see what was going on.

Meanwhile the teacher was in a boiling rage but since it was difficult to handle 60 children, she figured it would be easier to handle the one kid on the other side of the room. So when I came to her class to tell her what I was doing, she gave me piece of her mind about whatever I was trying to do in the room by bolting the door would land me into trouble and so on and so forth. When I finally managed to tell her I was trying to take my insulin shot she said ‘Oh!’ A non-apologetic, non-loving, indifferent bitch of an ‘Oh!’

And as if that wasn’t enough, she then turned to the class and said- “It’s all right, she was just taking an injection!"

I thought then, that I would rather die than stand there and take all the mumbles and stares, even as I hoped God would hear my wish and maybe grant it. But God isn’t so relenting,.

Later, when I told the headmistress, she gave me another option. Now, I had to choose between either taking my shot in the same room or in the headmistress’ office. Yikes! I chose to use the toilet instead and spent a great deal of time in the bathroom and still more time outside of it, trying to figure out how I could inject myself if I held the vial in one hand and the insulin box in the other.

Finally, I stopped taking my shots at school. I would rush home and administer insulin with the darned novopen then. Meanwhile, I would also fight the voracious hunger that engulfs every child as soon as s/he enters the house after school as I waited for half an hour to pass before I ate my lunch.

It didn’t do much good to my diabetes but who cares about sugar control when you can get back to being an insignificant nobody again?

The power unleashed...

School resumed soon after and I left from home on the first day in my new avatar, armed with syringes, a vial of 30-70 insulin, and some spirited cotton swabs, glucose and so on and so forth.

And I was late! As I stood in a single file with fellow late-risers, I felt different from the others. I remember THAT point as the first conscious realization of my diabetes. I knew I could not just do things on my own whims and fancies anymore. I was chained by certain factors that I must take care of, at all times. It won't take a break while I am school, and so neither can I.

These thoughts, of course won't do you any good and you don't need a degree in psychology to know this. So while I was wallowing in self-pity, a snobbish and alarmingly large prefect turned up before my eyes and gave a dramatic flick to her neck towards the playground. I assume this meant we had to start running, since the first person in the file started doing just that.

We followed his lead as I tried to make sense out of the protest signals that were being sent back and forth from my nerves to my dull brain. And somewhere in the middle of my huffing-puffing, I remembered what Mum had told me- do NOT run around in the sun if you haven't eaten anything before it.

So, in an incident that was much like Oliver Twist asking for more soup, I went to the prefect and said "I cannot run like this". She looked at me from head to toe, smirked and said "Of course you can't!" Which, of course offended all the lard I was carrying in my body. I don't remember the dialogue that ensued, but I was, after all a small, insolent fry before the class 12 prefect and she was naturally insulted by the fact that I dared speak up and leave the line without her permission.

She was very mature in handling me and shut me off as soon as I would start talking with a single statement- "Get back in line and start running". "I need to..." -CUT- "Get back in line and start running"..."I can't, I will"..."Get back in line and start running".. "But at least let me..."..."Get back in line and start running".

Then I started feeling dizzy or maybe I THOUGHT I was feeling dizzy but in any case, my mother was called and there was a crowd around me as I sat in the Principal's office eating delicious chocolate biscuits- everybody telling me to have talked to the prefect, how was she to know you are diabetic, she was just doing her job blah blah... screech screech...

And I felt everything was so unfair- how could I tell that waddling shelf of fat anything when she was threatening to crush me with all she had, and that was saying something.

My mother came and spoke with the principal. I was issued a letter from him, written in his own hand with his signatory green Pilot pen. It said that I shall not be given any physical punishments or asked to be part of any exercises if I said I should not.

That letter, to any 6th grade kid is as good as finding Harry Potter's wand. It made me feel powerful, invincible and fearless. My mother got the letter laminated and I would carry it in my pocket at all times. I would purposely waste time and be late for assembly and classes and laze around in the games period.

I would start crying every night and then not go to school the next day, so much so that I hardly attended school in the 6th and 7th grade. I abused this new power I had found, and felt that getting shots thrice a day in return wasn't a bad bargain if I could get away with things this easily.

But needles were only a part of the whole bargain- there was a lot more that I had ruined for myself by what I did in those 2 years. But I was too young and too silly to know any of this, then.

Telling THEM

So my diabetes has shaped a substantial part of the person I am today. It was during the "telling them" phase that I became a keen observer of the emotions and reactions of people.

THEM of course refers to the mere mortals who are happily worrying about house mortgages or property conflicts with brothers, which apparently are really serious problems.

Diabetes is often referred to as sugar, and since I didn't even know this fact for sure and actually thought I had diabetes AND sugar both (Dear God, why must it all happen to me), the sole reason why my parents took me along was the desperate necessity to keep me within grab-and-put-glucose-in-mouth distance.
What I am trying to say is that I was the third person in all conversations about me.

We (and I obviously mean my Mum and Dad) only told people who we thought must absolutely necessarily be told. So we went to school to talk to the principal and teachers and then went to my BESTEST friend's house and talked to her parents and gave her, what I am sure was her first lesson in emergency medical treatment.

I saw the reactions and expressions to this tragic news, and since it is always bloody boring to sit in adult conversations, I would imagine the things that they would be saying in THEIR minds.

Some excerpts of this rather interesting activity have been mentioned under

(Note: The reactions are not a work of fiction. The dialogues may not be a work of fiction either, though who can tell.)


"Our daughter was diagnosed with diabetes in these summer holidays. She will have to take insulin thrice a day and check her blood sugar every now and then. She will have to eat a snack before her games class and will have to carry glucose with her at all times and if her blood sugar drops, she will have to be administered a spoonful of this or anything sweet. But we are sure you can see she will be a normal child in every way."


Principal: Looks into his diary "Hold on for a minute, normal? Shweta? Is that a positive side-effect of this insu-whattzisname? Isn't this the same kid about whom all teachers say... anyways, FOCUS."

Teacher: Nods head sympathetically Hmmm... sad but no real tragedy really. The girl looks as good as stoned in class most of the time anyways. I wonder if I should let her play the tree part in the class drama. She has to sway at one point and it may drop her sugar.

Best friend's Mom: Looks over at her daughter Thank god it wasn't my girl. Poor Mrs. Kakkar. I must tell my daughter to stay away from Shweta. What if she catches the bloody thing?

Looks at the plates served on the coffee table Hmmm... chocolate biscuits and potato cutlets. Not good. Will have to bring up the matter of low-fat snacks at the next ladies club meeting.

Best Friend: BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ






---- STATIC ----

Me: Dear God, why did I chose a best friend that made me look smart? Now I am goner if my sugar drops.

All the diabetic gyaan!

In my first year of diagnosis, I was laden with books, journals, articles, magazines and video-tapes : EVERYTHING ever written/recorded about diabetes.
And it was bloody boring.
The same, dull-looking covers; the authors' names on the back- all cast from the same mould with a trizillion qualifications in medicine; the same content beginning with "the Difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes" and ending with a calorie chart or an FAQ's section.

I would only read three things in all these books, and in this order-

1. Should diabetics Smoke?

2. Alcohol consumption for diabetics.

and snigger while reading

3. Pregnancy and its complications in diabetic women.


In my defence I was a 10 year old burdened with excessive information and way beyond my understanding- I had to find some way to entertain myself.

But while these books (which I later did manage to read for the purpose they were originally given to me) would tell a person everything about the medical condition that is diabetes, they said nothing about the life that comes gift-wrapped with it- SURPRISE!

They did not, for example prepare me for how to tell friends about what I had suddenly been inflicted with, or what to do when somebody looked at me sympathetically and said "you poor child, what a tragedy".

Or when the games teacher would look with pitiful eyes at my outstretched hand and say, "You can't participate in the sports competitions, beta ; you might fall sick".

Diagnosis part # 3: You have diabetes !!

The blood test probably happened on a Friday because the next night we were all at my aunt's place for the customary Saturday night dinner with immediate and extended family- a very elaborate event.
I was playing with my cousins in the garden outside when I saw my mother at the gate, with the lab envelope in her hand. She rushed inside, and through the meshed door, I saw her sit down on a chair in the room where the rest of the elders were, break down and cry.

It freaks a kid out real bad to see the mother crying. And then I remembered- oh right! the tests. But that proud grin on having remembered something faded away, as my slow brain put the pieces together.
Hmm... she has MY reports in her hand,and she is crying...no, no she is wailing. I naturally assumed I was dying and started to immediately make a list in my mind, of the things I would want to do in whatever time I had left.

But I wasn't told anything then and since we had more important things to concentrate on- monopoly, pillow fighting and Tom and Jerry on TV- I wasn't bothered to find out either.

The next morning Mom told me that I had diabetes. I had no idea what that meant and so I kept thinking of things that fell within my maturity level while Mom told me all that she knew about it!

The funny part, however is that Dad did not want Mom to tell me. Funny now, offensive then. I mean I know I am slow but a tortoise would deserve to know he is a diabetic.

A lot of people ask me how I got used to the whole life-changing scenario, how I adapted and learnt about things. The truth is I don't remember.
I don't remember when it was that I found out what diabetes actually means. I do not remember getting my first shot or the first time I had my finger pricked (and THAT when my childhood fear of syringes bordered phobia). It is like suddenly waking up one day, trained and ready to take on your job. How and when did you learn? No idea!

But what I do remember is other other side of things. Getting back to school after the vacations, telling friends and teachers and adjusting to this life thereon-
a lot of things, small and big, which have been very different as a diabetic.

Diagnosis part # 2: Blood Tests

... I was, of course blissfully unaware of all of this, and even resisted- by means of kicks, bites and screams- when my mother asked me to go with her to the doctor. It was a rainy day, when everything is sloppy and muddy and rather ominous.

Give me any normal day and I hate hospitals more than a pretty girl would hate a pimple. But on rainy days, they are especially bleak and depressing. And the prospect of getting your precious vein - whose existence you weren't even aware of, until that moment - punctured, demands mutiny. To cut the chase short, it wasn't such a great time and I distinctly remember swearing to myself that I shall seek revenge and NOT look at my books for a whole week.

But as it is with kids, things are forgotten. And I have not been endowed with a bright brain, so I find it especially hard to remember things, and even harder to NOT forget them.

So while I was fuming and sulking all the way till we got back home, I forgot all about it the moment I entered my room and saw all my cousins fighting over a box of choco-pies...

FOOOOOOOOODDDD!!!


.................................

Diagnosis Part #1: The Symptoms

It was during summer vacations when I was 11, and had gone to Mussoorie with my family that these weird things started to happen.

Now, I was of the built that prompted names like "baby elephant", "dinosaur" et al. So when I started losing a lot of weight rather quickly, my mother was worried. And I was thinking the woman's losing it. I mean this should be a cause for celebration, right?

Moreover, I felt like my throat had suddenly transformed into a desert or something because I couldn't seem to drink enough water. And cold- REALLY COLD water. Of course, when you drink all that water you are bound to pee as much and I swear there was a time when all I did was drink water and pee (not necessarily in that order). I would also feel sluggish and cranky.

Even though mom did not then know that something called "Juvenile Diabetes" existed, some weird, motherly instinct made her take me to a pathologist to get my blood sugar checked...