I have diabetes and that's ok

Meet Semola.

My sister found him in a parking lot when he was a tiny furball, possibly abandoned by his mother because he was ginger.

By the way

Remember kids that February is ginger awareness month.

Be kind to the fellow soulless and donate here.

Semola refuses to purr, finds that tuna upsets his stomach, and has a thing for catching sparrows, which he then presents to my sister as tokens of affection, misinterpreting her cries of horror for manifestations of delight.

Lastly but not leastly, this cat will play a pivotal role in my diagnosis.

Part 1: Diagnosis

Let's turn the clock back to January 2^nd, 2024.

I'm in Italy visiting family and friends for the holidays and wrapping up the final days working remotely from my parents' place. My flight back to Sweden is set for the 4^th.

Semola has a particular fondness for sitting on my lap while I work. It's not just any lap he chooses. Mine is apparently a prime spot. A sweet piece of real estate. The ultimate chilling location. This is not at all surprising, as the sentiment is echoed by countless others who have been blessed with such an exclusive treatment.

I'm the midst of an afternoon coding session — or pure bliss as I call it — with cat in tow, when I realize that I have to pee. A natural consequence of our Italian lunches, where sipping wine is part of the lore and totally not an addiction shut up.

But how could I possibly disturb Semola when he is so contentedly settled? I mean look at him...

And bear in mind that I can't pee inside a water bottle because my company is not a trillion-dollar e-commerce corporation -- or at least not yet -- so the next best option is to recall my catholic upbringing and endure it, exactly like Jesus our Lord and Savior did when a donkey sat on his lap (Matthew 23:12).

Later in the evening I'm done with work and have an appointment with a friend for fika (of the Swedish kind). To the surprise of no one, I have to pee real bad. I gently move Semola so as not to disturb him...

...and sprint to the bathroom to relieve myself.

Now, that was a long pee, and since I like to comment out loud on events that skew five sigmas outside the mean, I tell my mother:

She welcomes the bit of unsolicited information, spends a few seconds pondering, then concludes:

You need to understand that my mom is absolutely not a doctor. However, she might be a witch.

Given that number one-ing for too long can be a sign of high glucose in the blood, she insists that I check my level with the measurement device we have at home, being her a fresh type 2 and my sister a type 1 since childhood. And understanding that it's simpler to comply than to discuss the reasons behind my Oppenheimer-level long leak, I prick my finger like in a satanic ritual and measure my bloody blood sugar.

The result is 22 mmol/L.

To put it in context, the normal range is around 3-4 mmol/L and, beyond 28 mmol/L, organs severely deteriorate, until you are mostly kinda dead.

While processing the enormity of the information, I remember that I'm supposed to meet a friend, so I text her:

Which, grasping at silver linings, is an amazing excuse that I can use to pull myself out of anything, replacing my previous and admittedly weaker: I have a sore face.

My father drives me to the ER. The triage nurse acknowledges that this is not normal, but at the same time she has a queue of 50 people that exploded their fingers with fireworks on New Year's Eve, so she's like:

It's 25.

The Italian hospital

At the hospital, I have an amazing experience. The personnel is at their most professional despite 50 lunatics running and screaming around the facility with missing fingers and a blood trail.

The only exception is a nurse who asks how come I measured my glucose despite having no symptoms. I tell her about the cat, the pee, the witch, and she comments:

I yes-and on the obvious joke because, no matter how dire things are, I will never let a joke un-yes-anded:

But then, during my stay, she repeats the same remarks two more times, so I am now inclined to think she was serious. 😭

Be it as it may, the conclusion is that this is most certainly diabetes, with a high probability toward type 1 because look at you. So I have this thing going now!

The doctor tells me that more analysis is needed. I'm given an insulin stash, glucose measurement tech, and all sorts of advice like not eating fika that much. Swedish.

Everything is administered with kindness and precision. Which gets me thinking...

The doctor types on her computer for a few beats, then reassures me:

Well, of course. Italy has sat on my lap. Sat on my lap real good.

Interlude: Diabetes

But what is diabetes, anyway?

In type 1 diabetes, imagine your pancreas as a Facebook friend that has been sharing conspiracy theories for a tad too long. Suddenly, you realize that his posts (insulin) are no longer showing up on your feed (bloodstream). This is because Facebook (the immune system) has decided to shadow-ban his ass, and now you have to go on his profile and manually like all the posts about the moon landing being faked by Stanley Kubrick so that he could get from NASA those juicy Zeiss f/0.7 lenses he used to shoot indoor candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon (insulin injections).

In type 2 diabetes, imagine your pancreas as this lazy ass security guard...

There is no certainty on why type 1 diabetes manifests. In part, it is genetically determined, but the trigger is unknown. It could be a virus, stress, fatigue, or using a microwave oven to warm up your panties.

There are more certainties on type 2. Your fondness for food, divided by your love for exercise, approaches infinity.

The Swedish hospital

When I get back to Sweden, I spend time figuring out how to go through this sub-quest, and I feel grateful for the help of my friend Google Translate.

At the endocrinology ward, I have an amazing experience. The personnel is at their most professional despite a lunatic running around the facility having not yet figured out after ten years that, in Sweden, the first floor is the ground floor. I'm talking about someone that is not me.

The only exception is a nurse who insists that we communicate in Swedish.

I say this with my Swedish level of a second-grader with a learning disability, which adds to the irony. I think.

Then, I get to meet the doctor. She asks what happened, I start talking about Semola and upon request I show her a reel I made of him.

She concludes that this is most certainly diabetes, with a high probability toward type 1 because I look fit. I thank her despite not feeling in the mood for lap sitting.

I shrug and say not really. 🤷🏽‍♂️

The doctor tells me that genetics account for around 20% of the diagnoses for type 1, so the rest has to be environmental. There must be something in Finland and Sweden that makes people sick. So let's update the tally of shit hands I have been handed by this country in increasing order of severity:

1. I was assaulted
2. My boots were stolen at the gym in 2017. (No blog post yet. Too soon. 😭)
3. I got diabetes

She adds that more analysis is needed. I'm given an insulin stash and glucose measurement tech that I attach directly to my skin and sends data to the phone. Then, through the phone, it's forwarded to the hospital so that they can track in real time if I'm alive and in case send flowers.

As is the case for Italy, this is all free because in Europe we recognize that the individual is not an island, but the integral part of a Community. The higher taxation level ensures the help of those in need.

Then again, I'm not really paying taxes in Sweden, am I? I'm paying them in Denmark. Let's keep this between us.

Finally, the doctor tells me that there is an ongoing study at the Lund University Hospital looking into halting the deterioration of the pancreas in newly diagnosed type 1s. Would I be interested in participating? Heck yeah!, I say.

A few minutes later, my mind goes to the students in Lund I have hung out with. Their drinking habits. Their allergy for challenging tasks. So here I am hoping that I'll end up in the control group!

Conclusions

As you can imagine, this is a whole thing!

But-- is traumatic a part of the whole? Should you feel bad for me? Should I? Absolutely not! It's not what happens to you but how you-- wait let's hear it from Gandalf.

For what it's worth, I'm keeping my chin up, my spirits joyous, my memes based and blue-pilled. I'm not gonna let this thing get to me.

This is where the post should have reached its natural conclusion, but I can't end it here because I have been lying to you.

You see, even though externally I'm vibing, internally I'm malding.

Part 2: Malding

In the days following the diagnosis, I feel angry as I've never felt in my life.

I need to take breaks to ✌🏼calm the eff down✌🏼, hating every injection as if I was in death row, waking up in the middle of the night with acid refluxes.

Not only am I angry, but I know that I'm the worst kind of angry. The kind that cannot be pointed at anything. Not the government, not the diet, not the lack of exercise or a decadent lifestyle. And as much as I would love to blame Jesus, let's face it, the guy (or gal) is innocent.

Getting help

The thing with me is I never ask for help. I should probably work on it, but that would involve asking for help, so I'm sure you understand the Catch-22 here.

That said, since day one of my diagnosis I have received unasked help from one of my closest friends.

Someone that I have known since we were single digits years sold. Someone that, when I fell into a frozen stream while snowboarding off-piste, threw red bulls at me to give me the wings to escape the pit. Someone I made sushi with in my apartment in Pisa, then we went out, followed a trail of candles in Borgo Stretto, ended up at a student party, blacked out and recollected the missing bits the next day by checking the photos like in that film. Someone with whom half of our conversations are made of references to our favorite movies.

Someone who has recently been injecting insulin, but for a significantly different reason.

His diagnosis

Let's turn the clock back to August 2023.

My friend is at the hospital. The doctors are not loving the scan of his pancreas but, they say, this is one of the variants that have symptoms early on. Meaning we got this in time. The outlook is positive.

The head surgeon at the hospital in Pisa is world-class. The surgery is done via robots through tiny holes. The pancreas unfortunately fights back, as it happens for 25% of the patients. The stitches do not hold and the projected two weeks of hospitalization become six. Two additional surgeries are needed and the final decision is to remove the pancreas entirely.

Hence, the need for insulin.

In September, I fly back to Italy to visit him, but he is not out of the woods yet. I finally see him during Christmas and he looks great. The 20 kilograms he lost, he regained. He's even back to working out, albeit with mild intensity.

Every year, I and other friends are invited to his place for the Christmas dinner. A role that I have is to impersonate Santa Claus for his children of two and four. This is something that I absolutely love because:

1. It reminds me of my acting days back then, or more recently when I have humble-braggingly dated a Danish actress who broke my heart
2. I enjoy lying to kids maybe a bit too much

This year, I want to deliver a performance for the ages. That will teach her!

I want to go full Method Acting. I want a Santa that respects tradition, but at the same time caters to Generation Alpha. A woke Santa instead of a homophobic one. The first Santa in the world that, instead of HO HO HO, says poggers.

At the same time, I know that any creative process is collaborative, so I'm open to integrating my vision with my friend's notes.

My diagnosis

Which brings us to January 2^nd, 2024. The cat, the pee, the witch. Basically the title of a Narnia novel.

My friend waits no time and invites me for lunch the very next day.

We continue chatting about our project to make version 3.0 of his commercial website, which I have been developing thanks to the skills accumulated with this wonderful blog.

Then, he tells me that he's opening a showroom area at his office, in a vintage style that includes a pinball and an arcade coin operated machine that runs in emulation all the games released before 2000.

Which is:

1. Freaking awesome
2. Kinda illegal

Now, we are not lawyers, but we believe that point 1 cancels out point 2, so it's all good.

Back to Sweden

On the following day, I travel back to Sweden and start talking to doctors and nurses while malding real good.

My friend texts me daily and asks for updates. He wants to see my glucose sensor as it's version 3, which hasn't reached Italy yet and is, like, half the size. Poggers.

He insists on checking my numbers across the day and compare them with the units of insulin I inject. More often than not, he mocks me because the glucose levels look like the stock market.

He asks me how much slow absorption insulin I'm taking during the night. I tell him.

Then, I go on a win-streak. I bounce those levels between the pink and the stink like a pro.

I text my friend to un-humble-brag about it...

To which he doesn't reply.

He must be busy, I think. I want to write him:

But I'm also busy.

Little did I know that, in that very moment, my friend was at the hospital, kissing his children goodnight for the last time.

Loss

Initially, I deny this reality.

I just can't begin to process how a person with a pinball in the checkout cart can die. You don't get to order a pinball and die. It's fucked up. It doesn't make any sense. The malding instantly stops, replaced by grief.

More so, I feel like a silly, silly, silly, silly man with my anger over literally nothing, occupying my friend's mind in his final days with such mundane matters.

I know that there is a teaching here, and while I'm thinking about the teaching here, I am reminded of something that makes me almost throw away this entire post.

In my previous article I wrote...

Well, am I doing the thing? Am I making my friend's death about me?

I reflect on it. Maybe I can write a concise, compelling, and possibly funny paragraph illustrating how this is not the case. That I'm not making it about myself. And if the writing is good enough, it can even become true. But it's not. I am making it about myself. I am using my friend's life, turning it into a story that serves me.

I don't know how much he knew that those were his last days. I like to think that he did and that he didn't care because he was too busy living them. This is the final teaching I'm sifting from him among the dozen others throughout our 40+ years of friendship.

The teaching is that I will be ok.

I will be ok not as a wishful prediction, but as a statement of intent.

And when and if events unfold in my life making things not ok, I will still be ok in the new context I am dealt with.

I will be ok because that is my preference. My stubborn, unyielding promise. My way of paying respect. I will be ok as an inevitability.

Appendix

The funeral is on a Tuesday. To make it, I book a last minute expensive flight to Florence via Amsterdam, leaving the evening before.

Three hours to boarding time, KLM texts me:

Among the alternatives, there is only one that gets me there on time. I book a literal last minute flight to Paris. I spend the night at the Orly airport sitting on an uncomfortable chair and killing time by coding (pure bliss). At 6:00am I board a plane for Bologna. There, I take a high-speed train to Florence, miss the regional connection that leaves right in front of me, grab the following one and manage to reach the church a whole three minutes late.

After the funeral, I get drinks with friends and family of the deceased. Together, we reminisce his life and our shared memories, not without resounding laughs, which is what funerals are for.

Finally, I reach my parents' home and collapse on the sofa.

When I wake up at dinner time, who do I find towering over me?