It would have been shocking and unseemly for the nurse to find my body swinging from the ceiling of the ward when she came to prick my finger for the test at 3 a.m. So perhaps this is why I resisted my suicidal thoughts despite the tortured knowledge that my body had let me down.
"We don't know exactly what causes it," I was told.
"Well at least I'm alive," I told myself unconvincingly.
I thought of my poor mother at home, sick with worry, offering up novenas for my recovery as I lay surrounded and blessed with her relics. Who was I to deny her one of her two strong sons, or the comfort of the daily visit that she had promised?
It had all barely begun a week before when I attended my GP with a red and raw throat. A course of antibiotics was prescribed. No joy. A dry cough took over. I was parched. On the Thursday, I was back.
"Yes, I have lost weight. Yes, my brother suffers with diabetes."
I was sent to the hospital outpatients for a blood test and an xray and on the way home my wife Frances and I stopped for a drink and a sumptuous meal. On the Friday, I woke up worse still, vomiting and becoming weaker. A urine sample tested positive for sugar and I was lagged into hospital right away.
I was lucky that the diabetic team was able to administer to me on the spot. My blood sugar level of 32 was highly toxic. Diabetes out of control. I was hooked up to a drip to treat dehydration, and given potassium to flush the ketones from the blood as well as being connected to an insulin pump, to bring the blood-sugar level back to normal.
Diabetes. I hated the sound of the word. "You are now diabetic" might as well have read: "You are now a zombie." What do you do when assailed by a career-threatening dysfunction? That's what diabetes meant to me. The consultant was telling me I would have to go on insulin. End of story. End of job.
Let's face it. Now I'm a wreck. I'm diseased. Unclean. Ashamed. Smitten. Yet looking okay from my side of the mirror.
Before the attack, my niece Louise had seen me outside the Guinness Hopstore. "He looked very tired," she had said.
It had been one of my better days. I was driving the open-deck bus tour and a group of men had boarded, dressed in blazers with special crests on the top pockets. They had to sit downstairs because it had started to drizzle. When passing down the quays opposite Fishamble Street, I burst out in exhaltation:
"Hallelujah . . . Hallelujah . . . " for the George Friedrich Handel connection.
In unison, like a spontaneous combustion of bass, baritone and tenor the men in the blazers joined in the Hallelujah Chorus. The deep tremble of their voices broke over the bus like the waves of the sea, cascading and pounding the ears of the rest of the passengers. Chronic illness could mean an end to all this craic.
"I know I'm being cynical." That's the first thing I said to Fr Tom, the hospital chaplain after asking him to hear my confession. I hadn't been to Mass in a year. Disillusionment. Confession was even longer. And I had ditched the folk group as well. It seemed remarkable how easy it was to escape. I was going nowhere, but where exactly I couldn't figure out.
"It's what God knows, what God sees that matters." Fr Tom said laconically. "For your penance say one Our Father and three Hail Marys."
"God!" I cried inside. "Don't they flagellate sinners anymore?"
"He's not covered," the insurance man had said coldly.
Frances hadn't fared much better at the Social Welfare. Our savings are starting to go and everything we planned for is out the window. ["]
"Worth more dead than alive." I repeat the phrase like a mantra.
Basically, with diabetes the lack of insulin prevents sugar from being burnt-up in the blood and the overflow is transferred and ejected from the body through urination. To compensate for the loss of fuel, the body begins to burn fat and muscle fibre and this causes the build-up of acid in the blood, referred to as ketones, which can damage vital organs like the brain and the liver if left untreated. The action of these ketones causes a great thirst and this is one of the classic signs of the onset of diabetes. Changes in skin texture like vitiligo can also point to the disease.
In hospital, the tablets and dietary intervention were working, as they did in my brother's case, which means that I won't need insulin injections. I went home. The crisis had lasted a week. Omagh had been bombed. President Clinton had admitted his guilt in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Kilkenny defeated Waterford in the all-Ireland senior hurling semi-final. Sonia O'Sullivan had won gold in the 10,000 metres in the European athletics championships in Budapest.
There are two important figures in my life now: four and 14. When the sugar level drops below four, I will suffer from hypoglycaemia. I will recognise the signs: sweating, dizziness, feeling weak, hunger. I will have to eat to relieve it. Above 14 I will have to test for ketones; I imagine these as myriad little muppets coursing through my veins. But I think I'm ready now. I think I can handle myself.