Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Irony Isn't Funny When it Involves Oreos

Two weeks ago, I downed a bottle of Kool-Aid's second cousin, "Glucola." Turns out, Glucola is not my friend, and I was asked to come back and try to reconcile. Days later, I was introduced to Glucola's condensed doppelganger, which was essentially an Orange Otter Pop, melted, but without any dilution.



Once again, I was told I was not playing nicely with the Glucola, and an appointment was set with me at the ironically named "Sweet Beginnings."

Personally, I think naming a center for gestational diabetes "Sweet Beginnings" is just plain rude.

I spent a good portion of the first third of my pregnancy “renting” my food. (I won’t elaborate.) Here I’d finally gotten to eat the way every future mom envisions herself during those nine (actually ten) months of pregnancy: no guilt dessert, pass the cookies BECAUSE I WANT THEM, and yes, I am having frozen yogurt for lunch, why do you ask? I was finally on track with my weight after actually shedding pounds during that less-than-amusing romp through a Roman Vomitorium. (My bad. I said I wouldn’t elaborate and there I totally did.) (And I don’t know how to spell Vomitorium, either.) Now, “Sweet Beginnings” was going to yank that bag of Hershey’s Miniatures right out of my hand, and I didn’t appreciate it. (And I have no clue how that entire bag got in my hand, honest.)


Still, I had a week to kill before my rendezvous with "Sweet Beginnings." I couldn't find a whole lot of specific information about what I should do, and all my doctor told me was a very vague instruction to avoid refined sugars (No entire carton of HoHos: check!) and drink a lot of water. There was also something about “walking,” too, but since the only way I know how to ambulate is to walk, I figured I had that part down.


So I turned to the only expert I knew: my sister, who likewise had this issue when she was pregnant with my niece. (As a side note, I’ve been told that gestational diabetes is largely genetic. Yet, our mother didn’t have it. I am wondering if Grandmom Keene has something she’s not telling us?)


My sister advised me that overall, the diet is much like “Phase 2.” That’s South Beach Speak for embracing whole wheat, eschewing cupcakes, and focusing on proteins and veggies. So that’s what I did while waiting to get my “sweet beginning” going. That’s what I did while staring at the pizza and cake at the office, and munching on my salad and cold chicken breast and trying to tell myself that salad and cake are totally the same thing and that I didn’t want cake anyway. I am such a liar.


Meanwhile, I try to completely ignore the other component to having GD: testing my blood. I was told they’d deal with that at the appointment, and give me the supplies and show me what to do. I figured if I got fixated enough on the food aspect, and sugar deprivation, I might not realize I had just been told I would have to draw my own blood four times a day for the next three months.


The day of my appointment arrives and I’m ready to go in and face the dietician/nutritionist/nurse/counselor/lady in a coat with interesting visual aids. She had a plastic potato, to show us what a potato looks like. Because I’d never seen a potato before. (Ok, ok, she was actually doing it to show the size of what they mean by a “baked potato,” as sometimes a potato can be the size of an oblong tennis ball, and other times, it’s the size of my dearly departed guinea pig, MooShoo.) My husband came with me, mostly in case I forgot anything, but also because, let’s be honest: It’s easier to have both of us listen to the restrictions and diet plan together rather than me have to regurgitate it to him later when I get home to explain to him why I can’t have fruit on my cereal (more on that later).


The dietician weighed me in and had me purchase a little book. $5 American. Yet she gave me the glucometer and automatic lancer stickum thingee for free. How generous! You’d think she could have planned it better by charging me for the medical devices and given me the spiral bound notebook for free, but I’m not complaining.

She then went through the book with me, explaining the generalities—which I knew—before getting into the specifics, which I didn’t, because they defy logic. In short, Milk is a group. It isn’t a Protein. Yogurt is in the Milk group. Cheese is not. Cheese is a Protein. Cheese is not in the Milk group. Yogurt is not in the protein group. Yet cheese is made of milk and yogurt is high in protein. You should be confused at this. Also, refried beans and hummus are not Proteins, even though I am positive they are.


She then proceeded to walk me through the chart of what I have to eat each day: 3 small meals, 3 large snacks. A large snack is still smaller than a small meal, but overall I am reminded of my Dr. Seuss Cat’s Quizzer, which asked, is a tall pygmy taller than a short giant? And I still don’t know the answer to that.


Overall, the foods I’m allowed are pretty expansive. There are very few things I can’t eat—cookies, cake, etc.—because they really can’t be done sugarless without defeating the purpose of having them in the first place. On the other hand, I can have as many sugarfree jellos as I want, and can count sugarfree ice cream in place of milk, if it’s sweetened with Splenda. Like the jello, some foods don’t even exist as far as they are concerned: garlic, mustard, vinegar, and others are “almost” free, only in that I can’t have too much at once, like sugar free jelly up to a ¼ cup of salsa. Non-stick cooking spray is also “free,” but I’ve never mainlined that into my mouth, either. (I only do that with ReddiWhip and Ez Cheez.)


Two snacks are the same, but the third is not. None of the meals are the same. Each is made up of a specific combination of veggies, proteins, milks (NOT a protein), starches, fruits, and fats. No meal or snack includes something from absolutely every category, and for the meals, you always get two proteins, and every single meal or snack has at least one protein. Some combinations, no matter how normal they seem, are never allowed: for example: I can’t have cereal and fruit. Oh, I can have cereal and milk, but then I must have a protein, no fruit. I can have fruit and milk, but no starch. So, goodbye, Special K Red Berries.


There is no way I could do this without a little grid telling me what to consume, and when.


I think she went over all of this first to make sure I was completely confused and not really focused on the fact that she would next be stabbing me with a small needle, because that’s what came next. Or rather, I had to stab myself.


I was given my gizmos: the glucometer, which looks like a mouse (for a computer, not the rodent), which is the brains of the operation; a film canister full of strips of paper that are slightly smaller than the “please sign here” stickies you put on legal papers for idiots who can’t be bothered to look for the signature line; an automatic lancet, filled with a tiny drum with six itty bitty needles, ammo in my Voodoo revolver; and a little carrying kit, sleek and black and with little straps to hold everything in, all zipped up tight.


She then showed me, in way-too-quick succession, how to replace the tiny drum when you run out of needles (use one per day, so one drum = six days), how to stick the test strips in the meter and check the code against the little microchip that comes with the strips in the film container to make sure the batch number is the same, or you’ll get a weird reading, and finally, how to jab the side of my finger with the Voodoo Revolver (lancet stick) at whatever depth you want to draw blood, touch it to the strip, and get a reading. I followed directions just fine and was ready to go.


That night, we went to the store, stocked up on things I knew I could have, and enjoyed a relatively normal dinner of a hamburger (no cheese, sadly, as the hamburger itself counted as my protein portion) on a skinny bun, which wasn’t bad, but it was kind of like a perforated pita. My mustard (mustard’s free!) kept squirting out the little holes in the bun. We then went for a little walk around our neighborhood, counting feral cats, and came back in time for me to test my blood on my own.


Or not.


I followed the directions, stuck my blood on the paper. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Tried a third time. Error code message. I go digging for the instruction book to figure out what’s wrong. It says “not enough blood.” There is clearly enough blood. But it’s not working. Ok, fine. I take the strip out, slather it on another stick, and plug the new stick in. Error code. “Blood was on test strip before insertion.” Well, yeah. I thought that might work. Nope.


I’m trying again and again, jabbing finger after finger, all the while getting more and more frustrated with my sore digits, fussing and cursing and crying, and getting nowhere. My husband watches, can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong either, and gets kicked out of the bathroom. I try again and again, seeing the error message of not enough blood, stabbing myself more and more and trying to smear the blood on the strip, but it just smears blood on my finger. The strip isn’t working. Try a new strip. Same problem.


After eight tries and eight sore fingers, I give up. I’ve also accidentally advanced the needle, so I’m down a needle, used up eight test strips, and all of my patience. I try to watch my favorite television show but am still too upset to even focus. I go to bed, but cannot sleep, knowing I am going to have to wake up again and get my fasting blood sugar rate in the morning, but can’t get it to work. I lay there the entire night.


I get up before my alarm and sit down with the instruction book, which the dietician never showed me. I read the specific instructions on what to do, which, again, she’d never shown me. She just had me do it, and it worked. Instantly, I find my error. At the clinic, I had touched my bloody fingertip to the very edge of the strip, coming at it from the side. At home, I was standing above it instead of sitting down, and came right down on top of the strip like I was giving my fingerprint or something. There is a coating on top of the strip, so it wouldn’t take the blood. So I easily test in the morning, but am still furious—the dietician never instructed me that if I came at it from above, the strip wouldn’t work. I talk to my husband and he says the same thing: she never said that. She just said touch it to the strip. Kind of a crucial aspect, wouldn’t you say?


Either way, I get my fasting rate. I go about my day, eating, testing, eating eating testing, observing some strange dietary guideline that isn’t Kosher but is still all about not mixing certain food groups (but allowing ham and shellfish) and doing my little walks around the neighborhood after dinner.


I’ve become a Voodoo doll, eating my Voodoo doll diet. If I’m a good doll, hopefully I will be able to give birth to a normal-sized healthy baby girl, and not a moose. Meanwhile, I can’t have cake at my shower, but I fully intend to enjoy some sugarfree ice cream, and then go poke myself, just for kicks.

5 comments:

  1. Alli, pregnancy is not 10 months, I know people say that but it is wrong. It actually isn't even 9 full months. As I know you are bad at math I will explain. A pregnancy is 40 weeks, but almost every month is longer than 4 weeks (February is the freak). However, that 40 weeks includes two weeks when you really aren't pregnant (the two from your last period to your ovulation). Thus pregnancy is really only 38 weeks and 38 weeks is less than 3/4 of 52, which would be nine months. So really pregnancy is really only about 8 months and 3 weeks.

    Also sorry to hear about your annoying condition. That really sucks. Also you are allowed to eat shellfish? I thought that was a no-no? No?

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  2. It IS ten, if you are doing 10 months of 4 weeks. But it's always weird, like you say, since no month, except the BEST month, which is February, has only 28 days. That's why we usually use what week we're in, since I have no clue what "month" I'm in. Like you said, how would you count it? I'm 28 weeks along, almost 29. But month? I can tell you it is August. I am in August! But most practitioners say "it's really 10." I have no idea how they do that unless they are using every month on the calendar as February.

    And I can have shellfish, for sure. I must watch my mercury levels--like any pregnant woman--but shellfish is ok, both in the regular-pregnant world and in the GD-pregnant world. About 2 servings a week is ok. Would I eat shellfish now? Not if it's from the Gulf Coast!

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  3. The doctor I had with my first pregnancy said it was nine months and four days but I don't know how they figure that either. As far as the notion of eating whatever you want whenever you want you really don't want to do that. You have to remember that whatever you eat your baby eats(and that goes double if you decide to breast feed her after she arrives. You can say goodbye to chocolate and green veggies for a few months unless you want to hear her crying from gas pain)and do you really want your baby to eat tons of cookies, cake and ice cream? My cousin followed the whatever and whenever approach and she gained 100 pounds during her pregnancy. With both my girls I tried to remember that whatever I ate I fed to them and I gained 40 pounds with my first who was almost 10 pounds at birth and I gained 30 pounds with my second who was almost nine pounds. Not too bad in my opinion(considering they say 30 pounds with a 7 1/2 pounds baby)and with breast feeding I lost everything I gained plus some. So try not to feel too bad about not being able to eat whatever and whenever. You may not be able to have cake at your shower but maybe you can find an equally yummy dessert that you can have.

    Good Luck!
    Johanna

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  4. You have a strong (and funny) voice online. Keep blogging, I'd love to hear more about your experiences!

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  5. Please post more!
    Also -- can you post that chart/grid they gave you? I have to go in for my 3hour 'playdate' test and am interested in the chart just to start eating healthier... I can't seem to find anything similair online that is in chart form (nice and easy, something to stick the fridge.)

    :)

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