Jelly Babies do work!!!!

I have a bag of jelly babies on the kitchen table and a bag of jelly babies in the car door. If I should have a diabetic hypo then four fat jelly babies should do the trick.
I dont like jelly babies on account of me eating a black one when I was a kid and ended up chuntering.
The NHS web site for diabetes actually instructs the imbibing of fat jelly babies to help a hypo.
This morning I woke with my blood sugar dangerously low. I had two white ones and 2 pink babies, gummy sugar sticking to the roof of my mouth. But my blood sugar stabilised.
I’m injecting insulin into my fat cortisol belly, it’s a hormone not a drug, I’m told, the smell is horrible like a hospital corridor, but needs must and at the moment I must.
My body has taken a battering, the last drug I took was for my kidneys. The side effects were this, that and diarrhoea. The this and that I could deal with but the colonic onslaught was just too much to take. So the red box of offending drugs went into the bag next to the piano along with boxes of statins and beta blockers.
The amount of money the NHS spend on drugs that make people ill is beyond sensible. The doctors know the side affects, but it takes a dedicated patient to read the small print and then commit to poisoning themselves.
The Renal consultant said I had a clear choice either take the drugs or die.
I’m through being terrified of him, my experience is unlike his or yours and my decision has to be made for me and my own little body.

The guilt of illness is heavy. The recriminations, the sense of failure, but I come from a family of ‘sugar’ as we Jews call it. My father, his sisters, my cousins all with type 2 diabetes. After a life time of chopped liver and pickles, a life time of bagels and cream cheese, a life time of three course meals on plates that had to be cleared it eventually takes its toll, in my case it took 75 years and 5 months for the weaknesses to finally kick in.
The latest is diabetic retinopathy which means the eyesight gets fucked. Into the hospital I go. An eye test – I can read the first four LINES WHICH ARE VERY BIG. Then a scan by a nurse who calls everybody love an sweetheart. All day she sits in a little room pointing a green cross in your eye then puffs some air.
‘Thank you love’ she says.
Then the doctor who reads out the results and then into an operating room. Blue plastic hat to cover the hair, blue plastic to cover the shoe. Onto the bed. The eyes are wiped with an anaesthetic. The eyes are clamped open. Look to the left and into the right of the eye and injection of something. Which miracuoulsy clears the vision. I can’t see the number plate in front of me yet but they do it once a month and those nurses get your eyesight back.
So from head to toe I have been assaulted and I am grateful. Ridiculously thankful that those overworked medics have bothered to stab me until I’m well.
Hospital trips have taken over from jollies in Hastings, but I’m on the mend. My ankles are swollen, my feet look like a Botswanan fisher woman, puffy with little toes poking out the end, but I am on the mend, if I can stop the horrific thoughts from stifling my mind I can think myself better.

Today I sat in a pub garden, a hurd of cows mounting each other and munching the grass. The sun shone and for one hour it felt like the 1840’s, the swishing of the cows tails and a hot sun on my shoulders. Safety in the present. Let go of the past and shut up about the future, I’m not living in Gaza and I’m surrounded by support. I had red pepper pesto and green padron peppers, took my shoes off and put my puffy feet in the grass. Bliss.

Thank you for all of your messages.