An extract of Sugar free.
“What do you want to do?” said Ginny.
“Chinese skipping rope.”
“Tilly, do you still want to play Chinese jump rope,” Renee said.
“SO?” said Tilly.
Renee had no answer for that.
They let Tilly go first. Renee and Ginny faced each other, looped the large elastic loop that served as a skipping rope around their ankles, and stepped back until it was taut.
“What happened to you?” » Tilly said to Ginny. “My mom says you’re really sick and might die.”
“Tilly, don’t say that!” said Renee.
“I'm fine. I'm taking medicine.”
“My mom says you need to test your pee,” Renee said, laughing.
“Oh, no, I don’t do that.”
“My mother says you can go blind and…”
“Tilly!”
“I just can’t have candy and all that.”
Tilly walked on the rope, so now it was Renee's turn.
“No candy?” Wow. I would hate to be you, said Renée.
“I'm doing well.”
“And people are losing their toes and their feet and everything.”
“Tilly!”
“Well, they do.”
“Shut up and play along,” Renee said.
It was hard for Ginny to admit, but most of the time she didn't feel well. Sometimes she felt irritable and lazy. Other times she felt dizzy and confused. She just wanted to feel like herself again. She felt closer to normal when she jumped and ran, but even that often ended in weakness and tears. Maybe she was thinking about it too much. Maybe she needed more distractions.
Her eighth birthday was coming up on May 20 and since it was a Saturday, her mother had thrown a party. Besides Tilly and Renee, Ginny's mother invited other children from Ginny's second grade class. There were presents and games and, best of all, her mother guaranteed that she could eat cake.
First, her mother brought out a traditional layer cake with thick chocolate and buttercream frosting and eight candles on it that read “Happy Birthday, Ginny!” » It was for the guests. Then she brought out a special cake for Ginny. He hadn't risen very well; cooking with artificial sweeteners was difficult. And there was no frosting. It looked a lot like something you might get from an Easy-Bake oven, but larger and less symmetrical. It wasn't soft. It wasn't creamy. It was a little dry. However, it was good. Ginny could live with that.
The school year ended with Ginny's place among the top of the class assured, thanks to Tilly and especially Renée. In July, to get back to some semblance of normalcy, Ginny's parents planned a trip to Cape Cod. This would be the family's second vacation without Asher. Last year, he said, now that he was almost 18, he was “too old” to go with them. Ginny didn't speak to him for a week after that. Then he was drafted.
Eating breakfast outside was a favorite pastime of the Eastman family, one of the many perks of vacationing. However, on their first morning there, they couldn't get through the door of the motel's restaurant. After waiting, his father went to ask him how much longer it would take.
“Another hour,” he reported. “Let’s find a different place.”
The next restaurant they went to was also crowded. Ginny was starting to feel strange, like that feeling she would get before her knees buckled on their own.
“Let’s not wait,” said his mother.
They found a table at the next location. Ginny wasn't feeling very well. She didn't think she could speak anymore and her eyes were starting to twitch. They were running around, making it difficult to concentrate.
“Could you bring an English muffin right away?” She is diabetic.
Ginny didn't mind her father mentioning her condition if it would stop what was happening. Within a minute there was an English muffin in front of her. His mother sprinkled sugar on it. Ginny tried to take a bite but found that her throat tightened. She rested her head on the table. Someone brought him a large orange juice and his father helped him drink it.
Ginny was waiting for this pleasant feeling of renewed energy. Instead, she vomited all over the table and her body spasmed.
Her father grabbed her convulsing body and rushed to the nearest exit. Ginny vomited again as they approached the car, this time over her shoulders and onto the sidewalk. Her mother sat in the back seat with her so her father could drive.
Ginny's survival instinct kicked in.
Whatever you do, stay awake.
A fair amount of stubbornness kept her conscious. It was possible that she was shaking more violently because she refused to succumb. The car stopped. They were in the hospital. Her father carried her and soon she found herself lying on a table surrounded by people in white coats holding her while she struggled. She felt a needle go into her arm and she thought, “Okay. They got me and she let everything go black.
She woke up in a quiet room. His left hand hurt from a large needle stuck in the back of his hand and attached to an IV. She wanted to stand up, but when she tried to turn onto her side, the short IV line held her where she was.
A nurse entered the room with a breakfast tray. She placed it in front of Ginny.
“Hello,” she said.
Morning? What happened yesterday ?
“What time is it?”
” Around seven. »
The nurse gave him an insulin injection.
“If you need anything, there’s a button to your right.”
Scrambled eggs, buttered toast and orange juice. They tasted good.
Ginny was then sent to school with a roll of Lifesavers sweets in her school bag. The intention was that if Ginny wasn't feeling well, she could take one or two, and all would be right in the world. Sugar was poison, unless it wasn't.
Urine testing was the norm in the 1950s and 1960s and for years afterward, but it meant very little when it came to actual blood sugar levels. These tests showed what was happening a few hours earlier, not at the time of the test. There was a general attitude in Ginny's household that a low level meant she was well behaved and a high level meant she was not well behaved. If the test was positive in any way, trace (green), medium (yellow), or high (orange), her parents would lecture her about everything that was going to happen to her if she didn't do the right thing. . Sometimes they just asked, which in some ways was worse. A negative result (blue) can mean normal blood sugar, between 80 and 110 mg/dL, or a dangerous level, such as 40 or lower. Nothing in this system was specific enough for someone to know when to consume sugar or how much.
However, following Ginny's experience in Massachusetts, she could now feel a drop in blood sugar about half an hour before any danger. And if that happened, she knew it would take more than one or two rescuers to stop it.
Robin d'Amato is a writer and author of Sugar free.