A TRUE TEST OF CHARACTER

This is my first post-Halloween day since I almost allowed my diabetes to kill me last Christmas week. I had controlled my blood sugar levels with oral medications for 23 years and pretty much ate what I wanted.

Last Thanksgiving, however, I came down with pneumonia and stopped eating, though I was still taking the medication.  My blood sugar dropped to 25 and I woke up with paramedics working on me and subsequently took my first ride as a patient in the back of an ambulance, though I once treated patients and drove a similar vehicle for the old Knoxville Ambulance Service. 

When I was admitted to the hospital, it was found that all my physical troubles combined had put me into heart failure.  With excellent medical treatment, I emerged alive and with a vow not to take anymore oral diabetes medication.

Reluctantly, Dr. Barton my family doctor, started me on a fast-acting insulin delivered by a Novo Log pen injection.  He told me it seldom worked as a primary treatment.  I started it, anyway, and though I felt starved (I wasn't) for a few weeks. Not only did I control the diabetes with injections and diet, but lost around 70 pounds in the process.

Ice cream, candy, cakes and pies -- let's face it, anything with sugar in it -- were my weakness. It took a few weeks, but I got over the initial craving. Then Halloween 2013 happened.

We only had four trick-or-treaters, and a huge bowl of assorted candy was left.  I overcame the urge by going to bed, but it was still here this morning -- almost calling out, "Just a little won't hurt. I am so sweet."

I have stayed strong, mainly because I remember the unGodly, seemingly disembodied state, I was in the day I almost died.  The coronary bypass surgery I had at 42, never really scared me, but the perceived state of being present and unable to say my son's name has stayed with me.

Maybe I will put the candy bowl out of sight.