A few days ago I stepped off the train to embrace my favorite Aunt. She was waiting with my parents to pick me and the hubby up at the train station. She's my mother's younger sister in a family of five girls and admittedly my favorite. I only see her every few years since she's moved to Ohio. There were big hugs and bigger smiles as we all took each other in.
Then the drive back to the parents' house had the glow of those unique wonderful moments of family ruckus. For while my Aunt was regaling us with the story of how her initial flight was cancelled due to engine trouble and she had to deplane and ride back home an hour on a mini bus and get her son in law to take her back to the airport the next day, my father, who has trouble hearing, was telling us about the neighbor he met at the swimming pool that morning....you get the idea
I watched the elders get out of the car helping my wobbly, soon-to-be 87 year old father. He refuses to use a cane. After all, that would mean he's old, oy, go figure. Everyone safely inside, the food was soon on the table, with stories volleying back and forth, like my mother who was running to and fro from the kitchen putting out more food. Soon my brother and his family who live nearby were part of the pleasant pandemonium. As the sun set, my hubby headed home and I stayed overnight so I could have more time to hear the tales I've heard sporadically before about how their parents came over from Hungary in steerage one five years ahead of the other, of the relatives lost in the war, of the impacts of immigrant life, both sad and funny enough to make us now cry with laughter.
The next day the big agenda item was going to the senior citizen center where two days a week my parents hear a lecture, take a stretch class and have lunch with their new found friends there. Of course my Aunt and I were the star attraction. In fact I seemed to have them all in stitches when I offered to bring them all water from the buffet and I returned with 7 glasses on a tray. Immediately they snorted with laughter shouting, "A tray! Why didn't we ever think of that?!"
Having such a good time I decided to stay an extra night and day for which I had not planned. I only had two test strips left with me so I had to determine at what times I would test during the next 24 hours. I felt uneasy; I have not had to parcel out my strips for years and years. In the early days my health insurance company only gave me enough strips to test three times a day and I balked at having to test three times a day. Today I test 6-8 times a day but I smiled noticing how I didn't like that I wouldn't be able to test frequently. Oh, how I've grown.
There was one other diabetes doing during my visit. The first evening I asked my Aunt, who has had type 2 for several years, "How's it going with your diabetes?" She told me visibly happy, "Very Good. My blood sugar is between 90 and 105 every morning." "Great," I said. Then her face crimped and she said, "But my doctor just gave me a prescription for another pill for my blood sugar, it doesn't make sense." "Well," I said, "If your doctor is giving you another pill then your blood sugar may be too high at other times of day. Do you test at any other times?" "No," my Aunt said, "He did tell me to do it before dinner, but I did that a few days and then well, you know, stopped."
I went into semi-lecture mode about how blood sugar fluctuates throughout the day and she should test at the 7 critical times to get a better picture: before each meal, two hours after each meal and before bed and that she could spread out those tests doing one each day of the week. As I talked, she straightened her spine and relaxed her face understanding something central to her care that she hadn't before. And I wondered how an intelligent, dynamic, bright and opinionated woman would not question her doctor when she didn't understand something. I surmised it's generational. She grew up when patients didn't question doctors and when her father walked both her and my mother to the home-made ice cream shop in their small town after dinner. He walked with one one evening and one another evening so they would each have his full attention. That's one of the stories I like best.
So in the end my life was interrupted - in the best way. A few days with a time out from the usual rhythm and work and email, and my Aunt's was interrupted as well as she likely got a little more than she expected. Beside the Chinese spare ribs and Jewish rye bread and lox that you apparently just can't get in Ohio, came a little diabetes education. And a smarter patient will be flying off into the sunset next Tuesday.