When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I read everything I could get my hands on about it. The fear of complications kept me in line. In fact, when faced with the temptation of cookies and cake, the phrase "blindness, dialysis and amputation" helped me walk away with not so much as a taste.

I guess that's why I took it so hard when my vision started blurring recently. At my post-pregnancy opthalmalogist visit, my eyeglass prescription had changed so much in the last six months, the doctor suggested checking again in a few months instead of getting a new prescription now. He explained my recent high blood sugars (thanks to that third attempt at diet and exercise "control") had temporarily distorted my vision. There are no signs of perminent damage, yet. Get my sugars under tighter control for a two to three months and we'll check again.

After I left the appointment, with dialated pupils making for extra bad vision, I was really depressed. And frightened. And mad. So angry and blue that I couldn't even blog about it at the time.

I've been trying so hard to manage my diabetes and lose weight. My endo just keeps playing around with things and acting like I'm too obsessed with control. "You're not pregnant anymore," he said the other day. "You don't need to worry so much."

Well, when I can't read street signs or the channel guide on TV because my blood sugar has been high and my vision's wonky, I'm going to worry.

So, I did the one healthy thing I could do to make me feel better. Once the dialation drops wore off and I could see upclose again, I went to the message boards to find others who understand, have been there and could offer hope that this will pass. I not only found the support I was looking for, a wise man named Morris shared an eloquent explaination from a kind woman named "Molly":

"There is always fluid inside your eye, and even in the lenses in your eyes. As the blood sugar in the rest of your body drops, the amount of sugar in your eyes stays high. Instead of the sugar draining out of your eyes, water is pulled in instead by osmosis, to try dilute the sugar concentration. The extra water is enough to change the shape of your eye, and the shape of the lens, sort of like filling a water balloon, and the change in shape will cause a distortion in your vision. After a couple of weeks, the extra sugar and water slowly move out of the eyes, and as the pressure within the eyes becomes more normal, vision returns to normal too."

Molly explained it much better than I could, much better than my doctor did, and left me hopeful that this will pass soon.