I would have assumed that the harder part of adjusting to diabetes would be in getting used to the drill of measuring blood sugar values and, accordingly, injecting more or fewer units of insulin. But while that will surely give me an awkward new kind of moment here and there in the near future (for instance, what happens when a loud noise occurs just as I’m trying to inject a needle?), it is now clear to me that the far greater challenge is somewhere very else.

My senses – from peripheral eyesight all the way to how quickly I notice that I’m freezing – have been heavily impaired, not just due to the diabetes but also with the massive weight loss (about 20%, and I haven’t yet regained any, though doctors assure me that will happen sooner rather than later) being a major reason. This leads to all kinds of minor inconveniences, but more importantly, it makes it near-impossible for me at this point to realize that I’m hypoglycemic (lacking blood sugar, with the risk of passing out) or hyperglycemic (having too much blood sugar). Tuesday night, I was astonished to discover the former, and this noon, the latter occurred as well. I can work against the former by taking, say, a little cube of sugar, and the latter by increasing the amount of insulin I inject based on a simple formula. The balancing out works perfectly and rather swiftly for me. But: I just don’t notice it happening at all, and it will apparently take months, if not longer, until I have developed a good ‘instinct’ for such a condition.

So effectively, this means I’m gonna have to measure myself more often than the doctors suggested; probably more like 6 times a day, rather than four. That, of course, is not a big deal. But now I’m a lot more wary of doing the simplest of things like taking a longer walk, or going over to a friend’s place. At this point, I clearly can’t predict at all what’s going to happen, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.