This is not an emergency.

You can buy this keychain on Amazon.co.uk
(And don't you love how the website says, "dispatched," instead of "shipped"?)

I love that proverb, though I would never actually say it to anyone. In fact, I am more inclined to help someone out of a tight spot, partly because I've been there myself, a time or two, and partly because I really like to make people smile.

[I'm much tougher here on my blog than I ever would be in real life. For example, though I rant about grammar and spelling errors here, the only person I ever correct on Facebook is my own son. And then, only because I know he knows better, and he knows I love him, and he knows I'm doing it sarcastically. (I've been told I "try too hard." So sue me. Whatever.)]

So it surprises me when I come across someone who is less obliging.

Well, today it was I who brought what I considered an emergency to someone who stood her ground. I didn't like it.

So here's the deal. After almost two years of not testing my blood sugar, I finally bought a glucose monitor and discovered -- holy heck! -- my uncontrolled diabetes was out of control. Over the past three weeks I've been a little more careful with my diet, but really haven't done anything exercise-wise.

But I HAVE done a lot of obsessing [googling]. Here's what I've learned:

• Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia, under 3 mmol/L) constitutes a real emergency and can rapidly (within minutes-to-hours) lead to seizures, coma, etc.
• High blood sugar (hyperglycemia, above 7 mmol/L) can lead to ketoacidosis which causes all sorts of nastiness like organ failure and coma, but over a prolonged period (months). The patient should see a doctor. 

My problem is high blood sugar, and my average over the past three weeks has been 13.9 mmol/L, so, yeah, I knew I needed to see a doctor. But I'm still waiting for the New & Improved doctor to accept me as a patient. And I figured, I got in this mess over many months, so what's the panic? 

Then I saw this in the instructions that came with my glucose monitor. 

IMMEDIATELY

I called the doctor-elect. I am not yet on the roster. I didn't want to go back to my ex-doctor, since we had had such a nice, cordial break-up and I didn't want to have make-up medicine. So I went to a walk-in clinic. hoping for a one-night (or one-month) stand.

The doctor at the walk-in clinic did not accept that I had divorced my family doctor, and told me to go see him about my blood sugar. I almost cried. 

But she's right, of course. 

Bad behaviour on my part does not constitute an emergency on her part.

If it were truly an emergency, she'd have done something. It's not. It's just my current obsession.

I've decided that I'll give the doctor-elect a couple more weeks, and in the meantime, make a better effort to be healthy, but I'm not going to panic.

Here is me not panicking.