“Are you thirsty? Of course you’re thirsty. I’ll get you something to drink. No pop—too much sugar. I’ll be right back.” My mother slid her hand down my bare arm as she untangled herself from the seatbelt and staggered through the thick swampy atmosphere to disappear into the convenience store.
The humid, mid-July Iowan air caught at the back of my throat and I quickly adjusted the air conditioner, willing myself not to cry. I peeked down at the floor between the seats. A Baby-Sitters’ Club book stared back at me. This was a crucial age—some twelve-year-olds still read the BSC, but not mature ones. Not this one. But they had been my comfort books since the first grade and it was hard to break that habit in times of trouble.
Like now.
I picked up the book at looked at the cover. Number 4: the Truth About Stacey.
The Truth About Erica.
I saw my mom weaving her way between cars and buried the book under our pile of purses. Then I fixed my face into an anticipatory expression.
She passed me a Gatorade. “Hope this works,” she said worriedly.
For years to come I would laugh and my mother would wail over the Gatorade. “We’re on our way to the hospital,” she would lament. “She’s been diagnosed as a diabetic for a whole ten minutes, and what do I give her? Straight sugar!”
But then we didn’t know better. I hungrily gulped it down. The thirst was all-encompassing; I was a beggar woman wandering the desert on the verge of hallucinating. It swallowed my tongue and traveled down my throat to where even my stomach was begging for a drop of liquid. I would have drunk sludge just to save my dry, brittle tongue from cracking into dust particles.
The thirst would wake me at night, once, twice, even three times before dawn. There was no question of ignoring it. I would stumble down to the kitchen and put my cracked lips directly on the water pitcher, tossing a glance to the ceiling above me as an apology to Mom, and drink fervently. One more glass and then I swear I’ll go back to bed. Just one more. Okay, one and a half.
“Is your seatbelt on?” she asked me after watching me gulp the red liquid until it was three-fourths gone. I watched as we zipped past my small hometown onto the highway.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked my mom.
She laughed uncertainly. “We’ll find out.” That was too much responsibility for me, so I immediately revised her answer. In my head, she was completely in control.
Once she’d set her cruise control at an even 60 mph, she glanced at me. “Now how long exactly were you experiencing symptoms before you told me about them?”
I thought hard, grateful to be focusing on a clearly defined question. “The first time I remember getting up is after we got home from vacation. Remember, it was 1:25 in the morning and you were still up reading when I came down?”
“That was the very beginning of June.” Today was July 25. We pondered that for a moment.
“Well, I didn’t have to get up every night in the beginning. Just five or six times a week. Then I started getting up every night. That’s when I told you.”
“It’s so embarrassing,” I had complained. “Nicole and I were playing Monopoly and I had to get up three times to go to the bathroom. Three times in an hour.”
Her response was calming. She showed motherly concern, but did not let on how frantic she actually was. “We’ll make a doctor’s appointment and see what’s up.”
For the previous six or seven weeks I got up every night, unsure whether it was my thirst or bladder wakening me. One of the nurses told me I was lucky I had never wet the bed. “Most patients do.” I had responded, well, that’s not surprising—I was drinking so much water.
“Actually,” the nurse clarified, “it’s kind of the reverse. Your body didn’t know how to get rid of all the sugar it had piling up inside, so it sends it en route of the bladder.” I had wrinkled my nose at that embarrassing image. Twelve is not an ideal age to be discussing bathroom behavior. The nurse didn’t seem to notice because she continued, “And then, because you’re getting rid of all your liquids in an attempt to also get rid of the sugar, your body becomes severely dehydrated, and that’s why you’re thirsty,” she finished triumphantly as if to say ‘Isn’t biology ah-may-zing?’
I’ve always hated biology.
To be continued...
