Highs and Lows

WARNINGS: Yaoi. Mixing of present and past tense. Usage of second person. Lots of technical terms. Mentions of suicidal thoughts.

Highs and Lows

Chapter 2: Just What the Doctor Ordered

(Uchiha Sasuke's point of view)

I was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes on August 5, thirteen days after my fourteenth birthday. My blood sugar had gone so high that I passed out and had to be rushed to the hospital.

I stayed there for a few days until my sugars were normalized and was released August 7th. Neither my father nor brother found out about it until later. My brother had recently moved out, and since my father was away on a business trip, he didn’t hear about it until after he returned.

Three days since returning from the hospital my brother came over for dinner with the family. Before I was put on an insulin pump, I used syringes in order to inject insulin into my body before meals. When he came to talk to me before dinner, he saw me giving myself an injection in my bedroom. Bastard never did know how to knock. Anyway…

He demanded to know what the hell I was doing with a needle in the house. I calmly told him I was diabetic. He didn’t believe me at first, but when he did, he went to my father demanding to know why no one had told him I had been in the hospital. That was how my father also found out.

Apparently no one had thought to tell my father before that either. I thought my mother had. Obviously he was mad and took it as a personal insult that she hadn’t thought he should be told that his youngest son had been in the hospital. My mother had said that I would be able to handle it, so what why worry him? It still annoyed my father. He didn’t talk to her for a week since she didn’t tell him. He was also angry with me since I hadn’t told him either. He claimed I thought he wasn’t important enough to tell. He didn’t believe me when I told him I thought he knew.

"I am your father and you should notify me of your own problems. You’re old enough to pick up a phone and call me. Obviously you found yourself capable not to need to tell me, so obviously you are fine without any help from me."

The experience was embarrassing. In fact, being diabetic is embarrassing.

My father usually pretends that there is nothing wrong with me. My mother claims that he just doesn’t know how to handle my diabetes, and that it’s his way of coping with it. She also says that he knows I can take care of myself, so why worry and act like there’s something wrong? Ironically enough, for the most part, I also act like there’s nothing wrong. So what if there is a little machine that is attached to my body almost twenty-four seven that provides me with insulin to stay alive? So what if without it I would die?

My brother moved out before I became diabetic, and he remembers me pre-diabetic age. When he's around, I doubt it's ever on his mind except when he sees me monitoring my blood sugar before meals.

My mother gushes that I am a great son, and that I handle everything so well and that I don't need help. "No one else would be able to handle it as well as he does," she explains to her friends that my diabetes is not a burden at all. There’s nothing I need help with.

I do my best to pretend that I don't need help.

I act normal. I don't tell people. When they see the little black "box" in my pocket, most people think it's a pager. Or a cell phone. If they see the chord some think it's an MP3 player or an iPod. They can think it is whatever they want to think it is as long as they don't know it's really an insulin pump inserted beneath my skin.

I'm normal. I want to be normal. I don't need help.

That's what I try and tell myself. But I do need help.

Ever since starting college two months ago I have been having trouble with my blood sugar. I'm eating different foods than I did at home, and I can't measure the amounts of food I eat in the cafeteria. Normally I would use a measuring cup at home, measure out a serving size, and give myself insulin based on the serving size, but going into the campus mess hall with a measuring cup is a fairly dead give away that I'm not normal. Who the hell measures out their food? Most diabetics I know don't. I do.

But, now, with eating new foods that I don't know the carbohydrate count of, and without the ability to measure out the food, it causes problems.

Having an insulin pump was supposed to make eating out so much easier. If I know the carbohydrate count, I can mathematically calculate how much insulin I need to type into my insulin pump, and my blood sugars are usually perfect.

Guessing the carbohydrate count and serving size has been difficult at school. They use foods I’m not familiar with for meals. It results in my blood sugar going high or low. I hate it when my blood sugars go high. It has always felt like more of a failure to have a high blood sugar than to have a low blood sugar. I don't understand why, but that's what it feels like. My father, during the few times that he stopped pretending there’s nothing wrong with me, always used to ask me in that condescending voice of his "Why are you high?" He always had a strange knack of stumbling upon me when I had to give myself an added injection to aid the insulin from my insulin pump, asking questions as to why I had to use needles when I had an insulin pump. He always seemed to sneer at me, as though I had failed him when my blood sugar got too high. Perhaps the idea of being "high" even if it's just my blood sugars and not in the drugged up sense makes my father seem disappointed in me. I wonder if he is ever not disappointed with me.

Of course, I also hate the thought of being high due to the medical connotations. When a person’s blood sugar surpasses 240 for an extended period of time, the excess of sugar causes the internal organs to slowly break down in a process called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). That’s why so many diabetics have problems with their hearts and other vital organs when they do not regulate their blood sugar.

Because of those reasons I’d rather be low than high, so I tend to give myself what I think might be too much insulin versus not enough. Treating for a low blood sugar is also easier. I eat three glucose tablets to bring my blood sugar to the appropriate level in about fifteen minutes versus giving myself an extra insulin injection and hoping that my blood sugar comes down in an hour.

But the guessing is starting to get to me. My blood sugar keeps dropping too low in the middle of the night. I have now woken up more times than I can remember, my body shaking, my body in a state of near shock due to how low my blood sugar dropped during sleep. I've been eating more before bed, lowering my insulin intake during the night, and still my blood sugar drops low.

I keep eating different types of food, yet I keep having problems in the middle of the night.

If I eat too much, my blood sugar could go too high. If that happens, it will take a much longer time to lower my blood sugar in the morning, and my brain is too affected from the high concentration of sugars to think properly during morning classes.

Even after lowering my insulin intake the nighttime issues are not going away.

My blood sugar, upon waking one night, was 37.

A week and a half ago, it was only 22. When the blood sugar drops below 30 and it not treated, irreversible brain damage, heart damage, and even death can occur if not treated as quickly as possible.

I'm afraid I'm going to die in my sleep.

It has me sleeping less, feeling awful in the morning. My schoolwork has been suffering. My grades have been dropping, and my father has found out.

He's been threatening to pull my school funds if I don't get my grades back up. He wonders what the point of paying for my college is if all I am going to do is flunk out. My grades are not that bad, but high B’s and low A’s are not good enough for him. Honestly, I’m not happy with them either; I’m used to straight A’s, but other things are on my mind.

I have talked to my Endocrinologist about what is going on as well as with the dietitian from his office. They have both given me some tips, but their advice is not working.

I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, following doctor's orders exactly (even going out of my way to not eat anything I can't directly count carbohydrates for from the cafeteria), and yet it's not working. When you do what the doctor says, it's all supposed to work, isn't it? My body seems out of whack here in college, and even when I do everything I'm supposed to, it doesn't work.

Why won't it work? It's supposed to fucking work.

I hate feeling so utterly helpless like this. It's like the ultimate failure; to do everything you are supposed to do and have everything go wrong.

I'm not like other diabetics I know. For starters, I eat extremely healthy. No chocolate whatsoever (though I have heard dark chocolate benefits diabetics). I measure out what I can. In the cafeteria, I have a guidebook that tells me what the general carbohydrate count of the food is. I take food items of things that I know the carbohydrate count for sure and avoid what I don’t know.

I exercise. I eat on a regular schedule.

Even now I have been taking in less insulin, yet for some reason, I am still dropping incredibly low at night though my blood sugar has been skyrocketing very high during the day. My nights are unpleasant. I can’t sleep. I fear death when I go to bed. My days are spent trying to correct my body’s nighttime issues.

My body is slowly giving out on me; I can feel it. I’m exhausted all the time. Once, when I was little, I had the flu and was stuck in bed for two and a half weeks feeling utterly miserable.

My body feels in worse shape now than it did then, yet I still need to keep moving, keep working.

The doctor's orders no longer help me. My own research yields varying suggestions that I implement to see if they work. They don’t work either. I start to lose my mind as I physically and mentally begin to feel even worse.

I didn’t think that it would be possible to feel even worse. I hate being wrong.

Thoughts such as "I'm going to die in my sleep" and "it doesn't matter if I do the homework or not because I will be dead by morning anyway" are always on my mind. I can't get rid of them.

I don't want to die. There's so much I want to do, but I'm helpless to stop it. Still, part of me, a growing part of me, just wants to die to save myself from the rising fear that I can't control my own life, or in this case, death. Yet at the same time, with the way my body feels, it’s almost as if I’m slowly dying now anyway. If the pain and exhaustion go away, maybe it won’t be so bad.

With thoughts like these rampant in my mind, I did the only thing I could think of: I throw myself into my studies. It doesn't matter. I've still been so unnerved that it's lost its luster. I feel too ill to really concentrate. Besides, getting a degree doesn't seem as important as staying alive.

My nights are haunted with the thought that I will die before the next morning.

It’s silly of me to think that. I tell myself that over and over again. Yet after waking up, shaking so badly that I can’t even attempt to check my blood sugar, merely drinking an entire 16 oz bottle of orange juice in the middle of the night with my resulting blood sugar the next morning only 83, all I could think was "I would be dead if I hadn't woken up and had that juice."

With the latest threat from my father to pull my college funds after a B on a major paper, I start looking into other options.

I start doing comparative shopping for coffins and funeral services.

At this point, I feel I've hit rock bottom. My entire being feels so drained that I have little will to keep on going. If I fail at college, I will fail at anything else I try to do in life. So what's the point of living?

It will be better too, I've decided. A funeral is probably overall more cost effective for my father than the rest of my college education. My financial burden to my family will be lifted.

The constant fear will end. I won't have to worry if I will die in my sleep. I will know when death comes because I have decided it.

And above that, I will feel better. My body won’t feel so washed out. I won’t feel so horrible. I won’t feel anything at all.

It takes a few days for me to get everything I need in order. My self-composed will. My "suicide" note. I've even printed out comparative costs for my funeral service and coffin to give to my parents stating what type of service I would like.

It's late at night, and I feel so alone. I've chosen death by lethal injection so to speak – an intentional overdose of insulin. For a while I contemplate making it look like an accident. The scenario would be that I have food lying on the table as though I gave myself insulin with the intent of eating but having forgotten, but that scenario defeats the purpose of having gone through the effort of doing all the funeral research. Hence the decision to write a suicide note as well.

I give myself the injection via syringe. My insulin pump gives me insulin as needed, but for some reason, there's something so much more peaceful about having one injection. I've even detached my insulin pump, pulling out the needle from beneath my skin so I can be free of the damned contraption, dying without being attached to a faulty life support system, for that's basically what it has become.

I lie down in bed. Before too long I can feel the insulin taking effect as the shakes start in my body, the telltale sign of a low blood sugar as my lips grow numb. It’s when my lips go numb that my mind, which has been numb this whole time, starts to suddenly wake up.

They'll miss me. My family will miss me. My father will be so disappointed.

This is the ultimate failure. I will have failed at overcoming this stupid disease.

No one will ever remember me fondly if I kill myself. So stupid. So un-heroic.

These thoughts overwhelm me, and I cry for the first time in years. The last time I cried was the time I was in the hospital, sitting alone in the hospital bed because my mother decided not to stay the night after I was admitted to the hospital due to my diagnosis.

Now it will be me who's leaving them, and I don't want to leave. I want to stay. I don't want to die. I don't want to be a failure.

My body shaking, I move out of bed, moving slowly as my body has become too sluggish to work right. I reach into my fridge and gulp down the entire jug of orange juice.

The next hour is blurry, but I vaguely remember that I got a shower and re-attached my insulin pump, and I eat lots of food to counterbalance all the insulin in my system. How much had I pumped into my system? Way too much. It would have killed me in another hour if I had waited.

That was last week. I’m still alive.

Believe it or not, my blood sugars haven’t been as bad this week, though still not perfect.

Today I decided to come to a support group meeting. I'd never been to one before, and I thought that perhaps there might be something that someone could suggest for me.

It seemed useless though. The talk the woman gave was about needing a good emotional support group. Then strangers talked to other strangers about their experiences. While that's what I thought I wanted, I felt too far out of reach from the rest of the diabetics. They seemed to be able to handle everything just fine. But not me because I'm a failure as I've already proven by my pathetic suicide attempt which I also technically failed to go through with properly. A total failure.

I'm so angry with myself that part of me wishes I had a clone so I could beat myself up with how frustrated and angry I am at myself.

Maybe I should just leave.

That’s when I noticed him. He was talking to another diabetic, encouraging the other to open up about his experiences. Once I noticed him, I looked away, but not before I felt his gaze land on me.

I guess that was when he decided he would come talk to me. He actually sauntered over toward me, giving me a wide smile.

"Yo. My name's Uzumaki Naruto. Yours?"

All I did was stare at him for a moment. He was still smiling widely. He had bright blond hair, blue eyes, and these weird lines on his cheeks that almost looked like whisker marks. I wondered if they were tattoos as they seemed too symmetrically shaped for them to be natural. The other diabetic looked at my expectantly, and while normally I would ignore someone who has introduced himself so boisterously, I feel that I can't ignore him as we're both diabetic.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

"Hi Sasuke, nice to meet you." All I could do was stare at his blue eyes, wondering how another diabetic could seem so happy when all I felt like was a failure. Why could this boy do it, and I couldn't? Why could someone else handle what I could not? Why was I such a failure? Realizing my train of thought, I blinked, and sighed.

The blond, Naruto I think he said his name was, actually seemed like he was concerned about me. I wanted to snort at the thought. A total stranger was more concerned about me when my own father had no clue how badly I needed his concern. Ironically enough, the guy in front of me asked me if I was here because my parents had dragged me along. As if my father would care enough to come along with me, and as if I would tell him or my mother about my issues anyway.

"My parents don't even know I'm here. I am trying to find a place to belong, but I don't know if I fit in, even at a place like this."

My words clearly shocked him. I excused myself and left.

How could someone be so happy while being diabetic? What was I doing wrong? I felt even more like a failure in comparison to this stranger who smiled like life was fucking perfect.

"Hey! Sasuke, wait up!"

I turned around, surprised when that other diabetic, Naruto, had run out after me. Unsure of what he wanted, all I could do was wait for him to catch up to me.

"So what sort of diabetic issues do you have?" Naruto asked in such a friendly tone, it was like he wanted to know what college I attended.

Perhaps it was because no one had ever bothered to ask me that question before, or perhaps part of me just wanted to see the smile get wiped off his face when he heard my issues: I did what I'd never done before.

I told a random stranger – hell – I told someone all of my diabetic problems.

Throughout my entire rant of issues with my parents, the orders from my doctor that didn’t seem to work, my nighttime low blood sugars, and even my suicide attempt, Naruto looked at me quietly and expectantly.

Instead of losing his smile as I thought for sure he would – what kind of insane person (besides me) confesses to attempted suicide? There was no way he didn’t find that shocking – he merely scratched his head looking thoughtful.

The next question out of his mouth took me completely off guard.

"Do you take vitamins?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you take vitamins?" he repeated.

"No."

"Ah, well, you should. You see, when I was younger, I didn't eat all that healthy. So, even before I was diabetic, the doctor put me on multi-vitamins. Over the years I've noticed an interesting pattern. When I forget to take my vitamins, I get moody and depressed. I did a bit of research and found out the effect of B vitamins have on mental health. If you get that amount you’re supposed to it will make you feel better. Well, okay, I didn't actually do the research; my Dad did because he's just awesome like that, but I read over what he found, so now I make sure that I don't forget to take my vitamins because it makes me feel a hell of a lot better. For you it sounds like your body was probably going totally haywire on you because of your sugars going up and down and up and down like that that you mentally just sorta lost it. Taking vitamins will make you less depressed and emo like."

I stared at him incredulously.

"Are you being serious?" I asked him. He nodded.

"Yep. Try it! I use something called Alpha-Betic which is a multi-vitamin with some sort of thingy or other in it that's supposed to be good for diabetics even though there's no research saying otherwise, but what they hey? It has all those essential vitamins anyway, and it couldn't hurt if it helps, right? True wisdom straight from yours truly! This is Dr. Uzumaki prescribing vitamins to his patient Sasuke!"

Vitamins. He offered me advice to take fucking vitamins as a solution after I spilled my guts out to him.

"You also shouldn’t be such a bastard about what people think. Who cares if you bring in a measuring cup at school? You seem to have an air about you that you could just glare at people and they will leave you alone."

Bastard? I’m a bastard?! Who the hell does he think he is, calling me a bastard?

I glared at him.

"Yeah! That’s a great glare to use! And here's my number if you wanna call and chat 'cuz I love talking with other diabetics. Oh! And I may have an idea to help solve the whole dropping low in the middle of the night thing too, but I gotta call up some friends, or, well, kinda friends. I don't really know her but I know her brother, and he's diabetic, but she's good with insurance stuff so it might work out, but I don't want to say what it is in case it doesn't work out because I don't want to get your hopes up in case it doesn't. Some new technology is coming out that would greatly help solve your issues if I can figure out a way for you to get to it. You know, come to think of it, I could ask the old Hag too. I’ll ask lots of people! It’ll give me an excuse to get outta doing my homework for a bit. So, give me a call."

He pulled out a little notebook from one of his many pockets (I just noticed his cargo pants) and took about half a minute fishing through the rest of his pockets to find a pencil. He gave me his name and number on a ripped off sheet of notebook paper along with the name of the multi-vitamin he recommended.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with him standing there and grinning at me like there was absolutely nothing wrong. Trying to give my hands something to do, I ripped off a little corner of the notebook paper he’d just handed me, borrowed his pencil, and gave him my number as well.

"Just in case you get that information," I said, honestly trying to keep the hope out of my voice. He grinned at me.

"Don't get your hopes up too much, but I'll see what I can do," he said.

But it was too late. He'd already gotten my hopes up. I couldn't even resist smiling back at the guy. He was offering a possible solution to my problem. How could I not smile?

"Thanks," I muttered.

"Yep! No problem." He waved and then headed back into where the rest of the diabetics were gathering. He didn't look back as I watched him re-enter the building. Once he went through the doors, I turned and headed toward my car.

The entire drive home I felt calm. What Naruto had said, after thinking about it, made sense.

Part of my depression could be an imbalance in my body. I’d been feeling so horrible physically that it was sure to affect my mentality. Also, perhaps I wasn't eating quite as healthy as I thought now that I was at school, and I decided I would research what types of foods were high in vitamin B instead of taking the multi-vitamin. It was better to get vitamins from a direct source of nutrition rather than a supplement. Then again, to correctly get everything balanced out by calculating the needed vitamin percentages with the college food that I had would leave me with the same problem I had while trying to count carbohydrates in the cafeteria without using a measuring cup.

The multi-vitamin would surely suffice until I was returned to the safety of my own home where I didn't care if there were prying eyes to watch what I did.

Still...watching Naruto tonight had been somehow liberating.

He didn't hide anything. He didn't hold anything back. I could tell that he was one of those people who told complete strangers about himself. I was a private person, and I preferred people not to know too much about me. Yet, on the other hand, he seemed to be just as intent on being "normal" as I was. Instead of hiding it, he put it out in the open, saying "Hey, look at me! I'm diabetic. Get over it." And that's all there was to it. It was part of his life that he showed to people, explained that he was capable of handling things himself, and they believed him and let him be.

Though he seemed like the kind of guy that could get on a person’s nerves easily because of how open he was.

I also bet there were quite a few people who would have a hard time believing him completely normal once he showed them the insulin pump's tubing inserted underneath his skin keeping him alive.

I remember once, when I was younger, and I had to ride the bus home from school. I had had my insulin pump site (a site is the location where the needle/tubing gets inserted beneath the skin) inserted in my stomach. I had stretched my arms up into the air, and my shirt had ridden up slightly.

For some reason, an unusual amount of people, girls my age especially, have a tendency to watch my every move. Perhaps that has added to my paranoia of telling people too much about myself (except of course for the way my mouth seemed to work of its own accord, spilling my secrets to a stranger tonight). Two girls had sat opposite of me on the bus and had seen my site as I stretched, my t-shirt rising over the white site where they caught a glimpse of where the insulin pump chord connected to my body. The scenario was not one I liked to remember, but I could still picture it perfectly.

"What is that?" girl one asks. I tell her it's none of her business. The second girl doesn't seem to take a hint.

"Is that in you?" girl two asks.

"Yes, there's a little needle," not quite, but I don't go into details for the girls, "beneath my skin that attaches me to a machine. Now shut the fuck up and leave me the hell alone!" I hiss at them. They don't speak again, but they stare at me in morbid fascination. Out of the corner of my eye I see them looking at me, their eyes deep with sympathy and questions. I hear one of them whisper,

"I could never live like that."

I tense, but don't answer. All I can think is, "You would if you had to."

I sighed, ridding myself of that memory. I hate the way people look at me when they find out I'm diabetic. They never know how to act. While I want to be as normal as possible, I haven't yet been able to deny that I am different at times. Most people either act too concerned or not concerned enough.

My good mood from speaking with Naruto all but vanished upon returning home. I clenched and unclenched my fists. I don't want to have another night like the one I did a week before. I pulled out the piece of paper that Naruto gave me with his contact information. I debated with myself, feeling weak again. What would he think if I called him now?

The whole point of going to that meeting was to get help. I hadn’t gotten exactly what I wanted. My questions weren't really answered, but there was someone who had offered help. Maybe it was all bullshit in the form of vitamins, and maybe he didn't know anything about what he was trying to find out with the technology, but hell, he had cared enough to try. That was saying more for him than my own family. Someone caring about what happened to me was more helpful for my mentality than I would have thought possible.

Still, I had this strange urge to call him. I couldn’t explain it. It just seemed to fit. Perhaps it was the same urge that had told me to spill my secrets to him. It was a good feeling, so I figured I would go with it.

"It takes strength to admit you need help," I muttered the old saying to myself. I also had a feeling that this Naruto person wouldn't give a damn if I called him and wouldn’t think of it as a weakness. I pulled out my cell phone and called the blond I had met tonight. He answered cheerfully.

"Yo Sasuke!" He said enthusiastically. I raised my eyebrows, curious as to how he knew it was me. He didn't leave me guessing for long. "I entered your number into my phone already and saw your name pop up on the caller ID!" he said proudly, as though I was going to give him an award for being so thoughtful as to type my name and number into his phone.

Yes, I'll admit it was strangely flattering. But there was no way I was going to tell him that.

"Hn," I murmur.

"So whatcha need from me?" I paused. That was a good question. What did I need from him? I wondered if it would sound stupid that I just felt the need to call him. It sounded stupid. I had never gotten an urge to do something like that. Yet that was truly how it had felt.

"Do you remember all that bullshit they talked about tonight about needing an emotional support group?" I asked. He laughed.

"Yeah."

"I…I think I might need one of those."

"The great Uzumaki Naruto at your service!"

Yeah, I could tell this guy was going to get on my nerves after a while.

But for some reason, I couldn’t help but smile.


Chapter 3: Not So Dumb Blondes


General information about diabetes:

1 in 2 type I diabetic teens develop depression. Seven out of ten think about suicide.

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) used to be the leading cause of death among type I diabetics before insulin became available. Many people who do not take care of themselves still die due to DKA.

Notes about my life:

Two of my great aunts died due to the resulting problem of DKA back in the 1940s/1950s.

I had Sasuke’s problem around four and a half years ago. My sugars kept dropping low in the middle of the night, leaving my body feeling horrible, and sadly enough, so horrible that there were times I truly did wish I would just die. Thankfully I got the problem worked out. Yay!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! If you have any general questions, let me know. ~ Jelp