I've had life and death health issues happen to me before. I had a cancer scare when I was 18 which a surgery hopefully took care of and I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 29 after a year long battle with doctors and insurance companies to find out what was officially wrong with me, and now here I was again.
To be fair, this time around, maybe I knew this was inevitable. Unlike the other two health issues which I had no warning or knowledge about prior to them happening, I've dealt with this since I was 14. I remember the first day it happened to me with almost crystal clarity. I was sitting in a computer lab at school doing some class work and all of a sudden I felt so hot like someone had dialed up the heat to 100 degrees. Then I began to shake and feel clammy, and my heart was racing, and my eyes just went squirly like I couldn't focus them on anything. I remember lumbering up from my seat and over to my teacher who took one look at me and excused me to the bathroom. To this day, not sure how I made it down the hall, but I did, opened up a stall, and just passed out right then and there.
Thankfully I woke up a few minutes later totally disoriented. No one had been in the stalls or seen me, so I sort of pushed myself up onto the toilet seat where I sat covered in sweat. I sat until I could really see straight again, then went to the sink and splashed my face with some cold water and tried to dry out my armpits. I had no clue what had happened. Other then the usual kid colds and ear aches, prior to that moment, nothing had ever been seriously wrong with me before. It's crazy, but I just wanted to get back to it, so I told no one what had happened that day though my teacher did suggest that I see the school nurse because it took a while for me to come back and she could see I was in physical distress. It didn't seem to happen again after that, and I chocked it up to a one off random thing and moved on.
In high school though, things got worse. I would have these attacks, though none so serious again for a while that I passed out, but they were getting much more frequent. I knew physically when they were coming as soon as I would start to sweat and get like this weird taste in my mouth. Luckily for me, I went to a high school where Health was the focus of the school (which would later help me with my cancer scare), so I did a little research and learned that it was hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. I thought perhaps it was diabetes for me, but all my blood tests at my physicals were in the normal range, so I just thought, I guess I'm some sort of freak or it was termed more reactive hypoglycemia in that it occurred more so as a one off reaction to something I was either eating/drinking or not eat/drinking enough of.
After more instances in college and the later deterioration in health dealing with Crohns, the situation had gotten predictably, to doctors, anyway, so much worse. They started throwing words at me like amputation, loss of vision, heart disease, skin and teeth complications, coma, and finally death. This wasn't a joke. I had ignored too long and now things were a problem, a Type II Diabetes problem. When you're stupid and stubborn, it's a bad combination, and I just told myself I couldn't make changes to my life. Things would be too hard. I'd finally managed after 2 long years of being sick to get one thing under hand, and now it was something else. I didn't want to handle it. Friends and family were enablers, even with the word death looming, I didn't try to change my situation...and the thing is, it can be changed through lifestyle and diet changes.
It wasn't until a serious attack happened for the 4th time in my life now, where this time, I woke up with incredible cramps on my side. I thought it could be the Crohns or my period which are both known to give me cramps, but the pain seemed to just intensify and it was too soon for my period. Next thing I knew, there was the sweat, and the shakiness, and with any energy I could muster I threw myself into the kitchen and shoved a giant spoonful of sugar down my throat fast enough to dry swallow before I passed out again. That was THE wake-up call. This wasn't going to get better and I was stupidly risking my life. Had to make changes, had to change my diet and my exercise plan. I had to even cut some people out of my life because they were helping myself basically kill myself.
Whatever health issues may come your way, take it very seriously even if it's just something minor. This is the third time in my life, I've had to be proactive enough to save my own life and not just continue on a path to letting things spiral. I've seen a friend and a family member die painfully and needlessly because they refused to go to a doctor, to go get help, and/or to physically take care of themselves. We do often take the life we have for granted and we do think we're invincible, but I know more than most, that we are not.
If you have been personally diagnosed with diabetes or know someone who has, take it seriously and take your medications and/or make the major lifestyle changes you need to so that you can continue living a healthy life. I'm lucky enough that through a lot of work on myself that I am doing, it's not necessarily curable like take a pill and it's over, but I can reverse many of the effects. Basically, don't do what I did and just let it get so bad that you're dangerously passing out because it's not fun and it could turn into a case, where you don't wake up the next time.
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This is one of my biggest fear. I think about it quite a lot; my health turning to shit. My father was diagnoses with diabetes when I was 10, it was one of the scariest times in my life. I have a friend who has cancer, I believe she was diagnosed at 18 or 19. My grandmother has a life threatening illness due to many years of smoking. Her lungs slowly begin to die over time. Life is sad and very unexpected things happen, but that's life. And it's scary.
I agree, it can be, but in a lot of cases, there are things we can do to either lesson the effects of whatever is physically happening to us, or in the case of Type II, to prevent the illness from getting to a point where medications are required. I deal with my Crohns everyday, and it sucks having to take pills and go to all these doctors visits, but what is the alternative for me---being sick all the time and feeling a thousand times worse if I don't treat it. Same goes for the diabetes. We can't let our fear paralyze us into doing nothing, because things tend to get much worse when we do.
lets hope this is not going to happen..