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?