The long one about vomiting (Draft 1, Part 1)

(This will come out in parts, the first below...)

A Catch-22 appeared the day the nurse came in. It was her first visit, bringing with her some ten-years experience, dry and gnarled fingertips, and something else. She looked down at my chart after introductions and made a comment about my age. Then asking if I was a drinker. I told her I wasn’t and wasn’t planning on ever starting, but she didn’t hear that. She heard 20-year old, new diabetic. It was January 3rd and she had no idea what brought me to this hospital, what forced a diagnosis.

As she talked about the importance of not drinking to excess as a Type-1, I thought about where her head must be. What could have caused her to ignore my strong assurance that I didn’t drink and never would? Had she thought I was diagnosed after not waking up on January 1st soon after the New Year stuck? My face lying in a pile of vomit or a soiled carpet or rug, unable to be shaken to life. Perhaps she thought my friends had called my parents or dropped me on their front porch – holding down the horn in their embarrassed and panic-laden state of not quite sober – hoping they’d deal with me so the drunken, shaking car-full wouldn’t have to.

No such luck. My mother drove me to the hospital not two hours after being diagnosed by our families’ general practitioner, on New Year’s Eve. In fact, I had spent my New Years in a gown, attached to a saline drip watching an Aqua Teen Hunger Force Marathon.

The nurse interrupted my recollection to tell me that she and her husband liked to kick back when they got off work – like, “Regular Joes,” she told me – and have a beer or two but never more. She told me that was fine because she either took the carbs into consideration when she dialed up her pump or drank lite. I must have looked interested or smart-alecky because she continued, “hard liquor’s okay though.” She placed one hand on her hip, head turned to look up. Like a role model she said, “hard liquor doesn’t have the carbs beer has. Beer’s my preference, like I said, but if we’re at a party, I’ll drink some vodka or something.”

I wasn’t sure if the way I was sitting, my unshowered ripeness, or something else that suggested I was a partygoer. This was probably her regular spiel, I told myself. The script she stuck to when speaking with young people and teenagers. And her blasé stance more likely reflected her concentration on the message that needed to be addressed, “but make sure you don’t go too far. If you puke, you’re in trouble.”

“What do you mean?”