Bridget McNulty

Guest Post:

// July 23rd, 2009 // Blogs, Diabetes, Life (and the living of it)

My first guest post ever! Today’s guest is 52 Faces, my blog swap partner from 20 Something Bloggers. Here’s what she had to say…

If Only It Were A Tapeworm:
The Hypoglycemic Journal

by 52 Faces

My entire life revolves around one ever-looming behemoth that I rarely seem to catch up with: my blood sugar level.

I don’t talk about hypoglycemia much because it has, until recently, been thought of as a “pseudo-condition,” or written off as crankiness.  (And it is crankiness, a beyond-PMS-level crankiness.)  When I have to tell people, I usually use the alternate term, “hyperinsulinism,” which I imagine loans it an esoteric air, like consumption or, I dunno, severe OCD.

My whole family is riddled with diabetics: my mother, her brother, my father’s father, who knows who else is going to develop it eventually.  Hypoglycemia can sometimes flip into diabetes later in life.  Don’t worry, it won’t happen to me.  (That’s what I tell myself.)

It’s taken me almost three decades to realize what I had and to hire an overpriced nutritionist to deal with it (never hire a formerly bulimic Swede, she’ll make you feel fat by, well…telling you that you are.)  (”There are no ‘former’ bulimics,” avers my boyfriend’s formerly-fat former colleague.)  (Parse THAT.)*

Why the delay in fixing my health?  Well, I’m Chinese.  We go by that old adage, “If you’re at the doctor, you better be dead, cuz you will be when you get home.”

What?  You had no old adage?  Pity.  You must have had a loving family and are completely well-adjusted with great health care.

Unfortunately, I had no such family, and lived most of my life wondering why finding my next meal crossed my mind every 5 minutes, why my head ached all the time, and why I was skinny despite consuming the caloric equivalent of a football team’s breakfast.  (Don’t worry, the skinniness ended after age 26; you don’t have to hate me.)

I foist my story upon you, Bridget McNulty’s regular readers, because maybe one of you has this “fake disease” as well.  Have you been accused of having a tapeworm?  Do you feel faint and want to punch people when you get hungry?  Do you get hungry all of a sudden, and as if you haven’t eaten in 5 years?  Are you hungry right now?  (And did you eat like an hour ago?)  You might be hypo.

On a serious note (what do you mean?  I’ve been dead serious this whole time), if you are experiencing these issues, don’t take them lightly.  Hypoglycemia has adversely affected my relationships (probably contributing to several break-ups – trust) and messed up my work schedule: I’ve had to cut teaching hours (and thus earn less).  While I was a dancer, I had to leave rehearsal 2 hours early because the headache was too severe.  It still takes a tremendous amount of effort to ensure that I have enough food ready each day to get me through.

When I asked my boyfriend last year, “Do you shake when you’re hungry”" and he said, “No!” accompanied with a funny look, it was a tremendous (don’t you love the proliferation of that word lately?) feeling to realize that 1) it’s not normal to have tremors all the time 2) there’s something that can be done about it.

Happy eating.

*I actually asked my coworker, the grammar king, to verify my hyphen usage.  I’ve been teaching SAT’s too long.

PS: Check out my guest post on 52 Faces, where I write a list of 52 things about me… that you might not already know…