Some Kind of Normal by Heidi Willis Read Free Book Online Page B

does it do?"
    "Pump blood," Ashley says.
    "Right. And the lungs, what do they do?"
    "Take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide."
    "And the brain?"
    "It regulates the other organs and processes
information."
    Dr. Benton seems impressed. "You must be an "A"
student." Ashley smiles back. It's a weak smile, but it's more than
I've seen in a long time, and I hope maybe he's diagnosed her
wrong.
    "Do you know what the pancreas does?"
    She shook her head.
    "It produces a hormone called insulin. Insulin takes
the glucose in your bloodstream and helps your body use it as
energy. With diabetes, your body has stopped making insulin.
Without insulin, your body can't use the food you eat as fuel. Even
though you might eat, you feel tired all the time." I see Ashley
nod, and I think of the last two weeks and how she slept all the
time and how I thought it was all because of the flu.
    "Then the glucose--the sugar--doesn't have anywhere
to go, because your cells can't turn it into energy or store it for
use later, so it builds up in your blood stream. Essentially, it's
poisoning you. Everything you eat and drink, except for water, is
poison to your body right now. Your body wants to flush the sugar
out, so it craves water. The more water you drink, the more sugar
gets flushed out of your body."
    "But she's not eating sugar," I interrupt. "She's
hardly had anything sweet in two weeks."
    "The word sugar is a misnomer," he says, turning from
Ashley to me and Travis. "Almost everything you eat has at least a
little bit of it that gets turned into glucose by the body.
Anything carbohydrate, like the bagel this morning, is primarily
seen by the body as sugar. It doesn't matter if it actually has
sugar in it or not."
    He turns back to Ashley. "But even if you don't eat,
your body is producing glucose on its own. You need insulin whether
or not you eat, and you aren't making any insulin right now."
    "Do I have to have surgery? My pappy had a heart
attack last year, and they stuck a balloon in his veins."
    "No," he says slowly, glancing at us. "There's no
surgery for this. There is no cure."
    I think these may be the worst four words I've ever
heard in my life. "But the nurse said she could live a normal life.
Like all the other girls her age."
    "She can." He takes a small black pouch off the top
of the pile of papers he has on his lap. He unzips it and pulls out
the contents one by one: a small blue machine that looks a little
like a calculator without all the buttons, a fat blue pen, and a
container that looks like what my camera film used to come in.
    "You now get to be your own pancreas. Since yours
isn't checking the sugar levels in the blood and making insulin to
cover it, you will do it yourself." He opens the top of the vial
and pulls out a strip of black, shiny paper. "This is called a test
strip. It will show you how much sugar is in your blood." He puts
it into a slit in the top of the meter and the screen lights up. A
few numbers flash across it, and then it settles into a picture of
a blinking drop of blood. "That means the meter is ready," he
explains. He draws an almost microscopic needle out of a pocket in
the pouch and unscrews the cap of the pen. He places the needle
into the pen and then lets Ashley look at it before screwing the
top back on.
    "See? Tiny. You won't hardly even feel it." He takes
her hand and presses the end of the pen against it. "This is the
lancet. You should put a new needle in it each time you test. Then,
you place it on the side of one of your fingers and--" He presses
the button on the side, and I hear a slight wiz of air. Ashley
grimaces and then relaxes.
    "Is that it?" She grins at us. "It didn't hurt at
all!"
    He squeezes her finger slightly and a dot of blood
surfaces. He holds the test strip up against it and it sucks the
blood right into it. The screen changes suddenly to a countdown. 5
– 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.
    565. I feel the color drain from my face. "That's
bad, isn't it?" Dr. Benton takes the