As the nurse walked towards the waiting area with a file on hand, she called out a name, in which a male patient responded by raising his arm. He, along with his mother, slowly, but steadily, walked to the nurse and proceeded to follow her to the room where his primary physician would see him. The nurse said she would measure his weight once he settled in. After his mom sat on the seat near the wall, he gently placed his belongings next to her and carefully walked to the physician’s scale.
After intricately fine-tuning the sliding large and small weights across the beams of the weight scale, she answered 114 pounds. The patient stood on the platform in astonishment, but quickly gathered himself, and sat back to his seat. The nurse, who he has spoken to a few times in previous appointments, administered other nursing protocols, including a reason for his visit, in which he responded that he hasn’t been getting better.
Minutes later, the physician set foot into the room to notice the patient’s facial structure. It looked quite frail than the previous few visits since the diabetes diagnosis several weeks earlier. Other than his medications and positive eye and feet results from various specialist appointments, the physician was unaware beyond the scope of the unexplained loss of appetite and weight loss that took a toll on the patient. If only eyes could tell stories, then the doctor would understand his plight.
On his last visit, the patient voiced his concerns about the decreased appetite he was experiencing. The doctor assured that the five prescribed medication would take about two weeks for his body to adjust to, including 2000 mg of metformin. Yet, the days leading up to the emergency visit to the doctor were not pretty.
Each day, his ability to consume food became a struggle. He could not, for the life of him, make sense of why his body was rejecting sustenance, nor could he understand why he would regurgitate about an hour after or, at times, immediately after ingesting food. Other areas in his life were soon being affected. Increasingly becoming weak, performing everyday tasks, and enjoying life’s simplest pleasures became absolutely out of the question. While most of his senses were intact, his olfactory receptors, however, enhanced to levels that caused nausea.
After persistent vomiting that led to relentless dry-heaving throughout the middle of the night for the past two days, he was reduced to nothing as he laid in bed. He was truly exhausted from fighting what seemed unmanageable. From the battle scars, some written in his inflamed throat from the rising stomach acid, to his inability to continue on his life’s work, he asked God in a faint whisper, “Is this how I am going to end? If so, then end me right here and now.”
His mother, staring with a concerned look on her face, felt in her heart of hearts that something was amiss. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but from her observation of his anorexic figure, her maternal instinct kicked in full gear. All she knew was that it was imperative to go for an emergency visit to the doctor right then and there. Otherwise, it would not end well for him.
The patient pointed out, as told by the nurse earlier that day, that he lost a substantial amount of weight in a matter of a week and a half. While he was unsure if the medications were affecting his overall health, his physician ordered to discontinue the use of metformin for a week. Hopefully, by then, the enjoyment of eating has returned by the follow-up appointment.
The following evening, his fear gradually turned to relief as he was able to take food in without facing any complication. One of the first things his taste buds relished on was a salmon sashimi order from a Japanese restaurant chain not too far from where he stays that he also had the strength to pick-up. To this very day, he is eternally thankful to his mother for saving his life. His health revitalized so remarkably that on his subsequent visit the week after, it resulted in a reduction to 500 mg of metformin, but only taken in the evening.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Masaki Araya