You Just Can’t Prepare For Everything

It’s hard being sick. It’s even harder being sick when you’re diabetic. When illness comes on slowly you can prepare. You can make sure, you have a plan: have someone check on you if you live alone, have your medication on hand, make sure you have food in the house that supports your diabetes, have your doctor’s phone number available if you need it. When illness comes on quickly, you aren’t always prepared. And I wasn’t.

Sickness and diabetes

My daughter had surgery. I asked my daughter if she wanted some help, she did, so I went to her place to look after her for a couple of weeks. I could help with whatever my daughter needed for her care. Everything went along great in the first week.

The start of the second week, not so much. I went to grab some groceries for dinner, got back, loaded the slow cooker with the soup we were having for dinner. Then it hit. I was sick. It came on fast. I didn't see it coming. With the exception of food poisoning a couple of times in the last 10 years, I hadn’t been really sick a lot since I was diagnosed with diabetes a number of years ago, likely because I was healthier with diabetes than I ever was before it. This time I had the usual illness related stuff: vomiting, cramping, fever; and the unusual as well, some memory loss. I couldn’t drive home so I had to stay put. I parked myself in the bedroom, I was the last thing my daughter needed after her surgery.

I realized that the past week had been a whirlwind. I had written a very stressful
re-certification exam on Monday. The next day my daughter had surgery. I stayed at her place for 4 days to help out. My birthday was coming up the following Monday and my husband had planned a weekend away at a lovely little Inn to celebrate before we knew our daughter was having surgery. I returned to help out my daughter early Monday morning, the day of my 60th birthday. That afternoon, the illness struck. Was I prepared? Not in the least. I had been so busy in that last couple of days, I had even forgotten to take my medication. I had never done that before.

Be as prepared as possible

So what did I learn from this? Be prepared. What could I do to be prepared, or at least, more prepared? Not a thing. That’s the hard part. As I try to think of what I could have done differently, I realized that you can only prepare so much for the unexpected. The only thing I could do differently is to make sure I had taken my medication as I was supposed to. Why I forgot to take my meds for a couple of days, I’ll never know. I can’t say it was because I was so busy. I’m usually busy. Maybe stress was part of the equation.

In the end, I realize two things:

1. I am prepared most of the time for the unexpected.
2. You just can’t prepare for everything.