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This is one of the contributions to:DIABETES ESSAY AND POEM COMPETITION 2009
I remember it well. Waiting in agonizing suspense for the result. My nervousness flipping my stomach round like I was astride an unbalanced see-saw. The type of see-saw that you would see in a busy playground, alive with screaming children wailing for some sustenance, usually in the form of an ice cream. In a pathetic attempt to keep them quiet they would be thrust upon it and start plunging up and down as if on some sort of happy drug. That was how I was feeling, like I was on a see-saw being buffeted around by a gang of rowdy infants.
I think it was my teacher who noticed it at first, although I cannot be sure. We reckon I had been showing symptoms for about three years and it had gone unnoticed. An undiscovered truth, an incurable condition.
That twenty four hour period crawled past. It was a Wednesday. A cold Wednesday. After school that day I recall vague experiences of the whole episode, my mother was silent. I could hear her mind whirring and buzzing, settling everything into place. Like a factory perhaps, organizing her mind into neat little boxes. I remember her face, full of fear and confusion. I guess I was too young to know; I was told not to worry but that seemed almost ludicrous. I recall sitting in our Doctors practice, oblivious and innocent. Blamelessly, I sat waiting. Forever waiting.
I remember the next occurrence was unclear, sealed and almost suffocated by my emotions. I was thinking I needed to get back to complete my history! Oblivious and unknowing. I remember sitting in that small dingy, dark room that smelt of disinfectant and moulding wood, and loathing everything about it: the window, the way it only opened a couple of inches; the door, with that stupid brown leather coat perched on the metal hook. The carpet, that scratchy carpet with grey pop corn bubbles all over it; the desk, covered in, what seemed and smelt like yesterdays lunch. Crumbs and banana peel decorated the rotting table. The tools and instruments, they were cold looking and ugly. That was the mind of a ten year old at play, dreaming off to a world that could distract me and take away any significant seconds. Being initially and considerately reminded of my name, I was fired questions, and felt pressured and uncomfortable. When the doctor told me there was a slight chance and that I was not to worry I gathered together a somewhat gaumless expression. A cold sensation entered my physique. Silence dripped through the pathetic windows that would only open a couple of inches, through the door with that stupid brown leather coat.
The events that followed between the Doctors surgery and the hospital were vague and a little forgotten by the buzz and the commotion in Ward 24. Within minutes of arriving I was soon used as some sort of science specimen, to carry out a multitude of tests. I was poked and prodded, as if I was some kind of feelingless creature. I was sat on a bed, a bleak bed with starched rigid sheets that reeked of intense cleaning chemicals and bleach. I recall a doctor or even a nurse, approaching me and introducing herself. Her words seemed so kind, forgiving and remorseful. I think it was her that tested me for some unknown disease with a name far too long and complicated to mention. It was several doctors that hooked me up onto an exciting device that monitored my heart and breathing. I felt intimidated by these highly trained doctors; the fact that they held my life in their hands filled me with a mixture of awe and petrification. They inserted long fearsome strands of metal into my delicate skin, piercing holes through my fragile body. I sat, surrounded by machines, needles and some kind of clear, precarious looking liquid that was continually surging into my speechless flesh.
It seemed like an eternity later when the doctor reappeared. I remember him talking to my parents about everything. He spoke as if I wasn’t there, I felt frustration creep in threw my toes and up my leg and I felt the numbness of defeat.
I remember it quite vividly, he was wearing a suit, I couldn’t tell what kind, I figure I must have been too engaged in my current situation, and in agonizing suspense. Forever waiting.
It must have been ten minutes before he even began to tell me why I was there, I remember lying there like forgotten corpse.
It came like a shock, the tests were all positive and he said what I had been fearfully dreading, dreading so much, anxiety charged me with terror. It seemed surreal at first. A surreal blur. Then the unexpected words spilled out like a snake spitting out a forbidden and fatal poison. Diabetes. Silence. A continuous silence.
Hot tears sliced through the tense atmosphere, trickling down my face as if to reassure me. Nothing would reassure me. It was as if I was alone in a room screaming at the top of my lungs and no-one could hear me! The silence proceeded. On and on. The hospital continued to buzz, it was alive. It never slept. I felt myself detach from the reality the physicality of the hospital, and yet it was creeping in closer, closing in on me. The word diabetes rung in my hospitalized ears. The concept was far too large to grasp in my diabetic hands. I felt bemused. Confused. Lost. My world had just fallen out from underneath me. Everything I knew and had relied on had collapsed, dragging me down with it.
This is why I live with an enemy, deep within. I know that it is always there, even if I can’t feel it. Saying that, over the years the enemy within has become a friend to me would be a lie. A cure would be greatly received, but I cannot remember my life before the vulgar, inconsiderate enemies attacked it.