Amy F. Ryan - Shot: Staying Alive with Diabetes

My 29th year was off to a great start. I had been promoted at work. I'd been accepted in one of the top law schools in the country. I'd lost some weight. I was dating a man who had two little boys, and I adored all three of them. Then I got a yeast infection.

A yeast infection sounded harmless enough. I'd never had one before, but my doctor assured me it was a common condition suffered by many women.

"Are you sexually active?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Same guy as before? Still monogamous?"

"Yes and yes."

"Still going to the gym regularly?"

"Yep."

"It's probably some combination of all of those. Be sure to use the bathroom after sex, don't keep on damp exercise clothes after your workout, and be sure to wear cotton underpants."

She gave me a prescription for a medication to be administered every night when I went to bed for the next several nights, and she cautioned me to wear cotton underwear and to keep dry. "And, by the way," she mentioned just before slipping out of the examination room, "there was some sugar in your urine. You might want to have that checked the next time you see your GP."

"Checked for what?" I asked.

"Diabetes," she said casually. "You're an unlikely candidate, but the sugar in your urine was high. So you should have it checked at some point." She paused for a moment while looking at my chart and then asked, "Did you eat breakfast before you came in today?"

"Yes."

"What did you eat?"

Sheepishly, I responded, "Honey Nut Cheerios." Paul, the man whom I was dating, often teased me for having the culinary preferences of a twelve-year-old, so it was with some embarrassment that I made this admission to my doctor.

"That's probably it. It's probably just all that sugar from the cereal getting out of your system." She closed her chart and looked up at me, saying, "Take care." And she was gone.

Diabetes. I would have to remember to get that checked. But not before I went away for a long weekend with Paul. We had rented an oceanfront condominium for Memorial Day weekend, a little more than a week away. That gave me just enough time to finish the prescription for my yeast infection and be in good shape for our vacation.

I took the last dose of my prescription on a Monday night. By Wednesday, all of the symptoms had returned. Strange, I thought. I must have somehow screwed up the medicine.

I called my gynecologist's office first thing Thursday morning. I needed to get this cleared up as soon as possible. A weekend at the beach treating a yeast infection was not what I had in mind.

"Dr. Anderson doesn't have any appointments open," the receptionist informed me when I asked whether my doctor could see me that day.

"I'm not trying to be a pain. It's just that I leave on Saturday for vacation, and I really need to see her before then. How about if I just come in and wait, and whoever is available first can see me?"

"Well, you can try that," she replied. "We open at eight. If you're here at eight, someone can probably see you."

I got ready for work in half the time it usually took and rushed across town so that I could be at the doctor's office when the door opened. As I drove, I chuckled to myself as I imagined how impressed Paul would have been that I was presentable and downtown by 8:00 a.m. He was decidedly a morning person, and I was decidedly not. My inability to function before 9:00 was a constant source of amusement for him. Paul was out of town for a three-day conference in New York and was due back the following day, Friday. Saturday morning we were leaving for the beach. Although I missed him disproportionately when he was gone, I was glad he was not in town to endure my "female issue." He would have had as little interest in hearing about it as I had in sharing the information with him, and so I wasn't disappointed to deal with the recurrence by myself.

I arrived at my doctor's office just as the doors were being unlocked.

"Hi, I'm Amy Fitzgerald," I said as I approached the reception desk. "I called just a while ago. Did I talk to you?"

"You did. I told one of our nurse midwives, Connie, that you were coming in. If you just go on back to Room 4, Connie will be right in."

A nurse midwife. Interesting. I was not pregnant, of course, but if a nurse midwife was available, then a nurse midwife it would be. I had never met Connie. In my several years as a patient of that practice, I had dealt primarily with my doctor, Dr. Anderson, the one who the week earlier had advised me to have my blood sugar level checked by my GP. I was lucky enough to have found a physician who took an individual interest in each of her patients, who personally returned telephone calls the very same day, and who did not send a nurse to do the doctor's job.

Connie entered the exam room, closing the door behind her. "What's going on with you?"

"Well, I just finished a prescription for a yeast infection two days ago, and right away my symptoms came back. I'm about to go on vacation, and I really want to get this cleared up."

"I'm sure you do," Connie replied sympathetically. "Here's what we need to do. I need to get your weight. And then, if you would, just pop across the hall into the bathroom and give me a urine specimen. Come back in here, change into this robe, and I will be right back in to do a culture. We'll have you out of here in no time. Now, take your shoes off and step up on the scale." I did as instructed.

"One hundred sixteen pounds," Connie recited.

"Really?" I asked, surprised. "What was I at my last appointment? I'm usually closer to 130."

"Let me see," Connie said as she leafed through my file. "You're right. You weighed 132 pounds at your annual exam just five months ago. Have you been dieting? Doing anything differently?"

"No, I'm doing everything the same as usual. I haven't changed a thing."

"Hmmm. I'll note that weight loss here in your file. Now if you can just go and give me that urine sample."

Again I did as instructed. I marked the clear specimen cup with my name, gave the specimen, and placed it on the designated shelf in the bathroom for a lab technician to collect. Then I went back into the exam room and changed into the papery robe that Connie had left for me.

Connie knocked and re-entered the room. "You have a lot of sugar in your urine," she told me. "Has that happened before?"

"No one had ever mentioned it before, but when I came in for the yeast infection last week, the doctor told me the same thing. Should I be worried about that?"