I’m still recovering from the sedation dentistry.

It was to be a case of “you go to sleep, and wake up all drilled to hell.” A nice idea in theory, but my discussion with the dentist about Diabetes, Insulin and Fasting did not succeed in communicating. And I call myself a writer! Ha!

To make a short story long, I followed the written instructions and had what Del called ‘the last supper’ at about 7:15 PM the night before. I took my Glargine before bed, like a good little Insulin user should. The Glargine provides the base-line insulin that my dopey pancreas no longer does. I’m type-2, BTW, which means this malady crept up on me in my late forties, and accelerated despite the usual therapies as I rounded 50 and still survived. I did some web work and decided insulin therapy made some sense. This notion was put in my head by a Doctor, but his English was so poor, that I had to check his notion out on the web. At first I rejected his idea of using insulin on Type-2. In fact, I sent him to hell, and found another Doc. But in the meanwhile, I decided (doing the research on-line) that his idea was cutting edge. So I started with Glargine, the base, and added post-prandial Humalog after a bit. (After I figured out what the Glargine was gonna do for me, or to me.)

How am I doing explaining this? Not so good, I’ll bet. The poor dentist didn’t get it at first either. I thought maybe he got hung up on “post-prandial.” That means ‘after eating.’ After I eat, I use a syringe to inject enough insulin to keep up with what ever silly thing I put in my mouth. (That’s the way I do it, anyway.) Periodically, my ordinary treatment requires fasting blood-work. I keep up the Glargine, but when I knock off eating, I knock off post-prandial insulin. Seems simple to me. I keep tabs with a glucose meter. (how many holes can I make in myself per day?) As my diabetic Father once quipped, “you won’t like this reading and if you test in a little bit, chances are you won’t like that one, either.”

So I got up on the day of the dentist and tested my blood sugar. A respectable 119 mg/DL. No food, no insulin, I popped the happy pill, as instructed, at 7:30A and we headed for the dreaded place. Now this happy pill is a bit worth trying to describe, since useful altered states of consciousness are very hard to come by these days. It’s all research for “my book,” after all. 

Well, bloggers, I don’t know what to tell you. I knew there was a party going on outside my paid berth in the dentist’s office. I couldn’t hear Del, but she was out there, trying to get some crocheting in. There was novocaine involvement as well, but that’s familiar to everybody with cavities, I assume. It numbs the gums, but you can still feel, hear, etc. The happy pill was supposed to do the rest of the job. Produce amnesia. I had a colonoscopy over the Winter break, and I know how this is supposed to work. That one, I got the drugs in an IV drip, so I was out, man out. Couldn’t pass a test on anything until the proctologist showed me the picture of where he’d been with that probe. But as it turned out, the poor dentist was freaking out that I’d skipped a meal. His receptionist(?), nurse(?), or maybe wife(?), got to badgering my wife with a can of chicken noodle soup (Campbell’s, just like Warhol painted it) and wanted the syringe and the vial. Del and I didn’t have this part of our act together. What they needed for sanity was the glucose meter (which would have told everybody that I was fine), but I had thought back at home, as the happy pill kicked in, ‘well, this thing’s not gonna come in handy, since I’ll be out like a light.’ So I left it home. 

So the freaked dentist withheld the happy pills. I got to experience what I had paid $600 to NOT experience (and my Dental plan does not cover ANY sort of anesthesia). Obamacare? I really want to see Boehner on this plan. By law. I started to writhe and wonder when the torture was going to end. Not nearly soon enough, my friends.

Aftermath. A little swelling, a lot of pondering. My doctors have been through medical school. They’re mostly fresh off the boat from foreign shores, getting their first taste of the American public in the midwest. They get out of here ASAP. But the dentist is older. He’s had plenty of experience and he seems to know what he’s doing. I am thankful he’s looking out for me. A crash of blood sugar (the so-called ‘insulin reaction) might be disastrous while conked out on happy pills. 

I was unable to convey my confidence in my own treatment plan. Why? 

I was confident that, having undergone fasting before, I’d be OK. No food, no insulin. If anything my blood sugar would rise, but hypergycemia kills slowly – to a point – and hypoglycemia takes you out suddenly, unconscious and without a say in the matter. I was confident there’d be no crash.

But to offer a can of Campbells? That’s not enough sugar (carbohydrate) and acts too slowly for the job at hand. And then to propose a counter injection of Humalog insulin…no. It’s just not correct. Not for me, or any other diabetic on the planet. The propoer scientific approach would have been to use the blood glucose meter. I left that at home, being the only person in the immediate dentistry environment that knew how to use it. (I assumed.)

In the dentist’s chair, I wasn’t consulted. I heard this brou ha ha going on, but I couldn’t make heads or tails until later when Del explained. She made it seem like an opera bouffa. Had I gotten to weigh in, I would’ve said “no food, no insulin. I’m fine. Give me the damned happy pills!” I did bring glucose tablets in the event of a freakout by the dentist. I would’ve said “give me one of those. They melt in the mouth.” Del did say these things. But she was sent packing.

So I got down to teaching her how to use the damned glucose meter. On me. Cause I got plenty more cavities where those came from. Time to stop this writing and test my sugar. 

A respectable 74 mg/DL.