I got the call at work. I can't remember the date, but I'm pretty sure it was the day after No. 1's fifth birthday.

I have a pretty casual relationship with the nurse practitioner I see. I'm sure that's why he felt comfortable giving me the news at work instead of calling me into his office to drop the diabetes diagnosis bomb on me. I had been seeing Harry for several years, mainly for a host of small things and because it was pretty easy to get in to see Harry on short notice. Need to see the doctor? Can you wait two days? Need to see Harry? Can you be here in 20 minutes? Not to take anything away from his skills or anything, but I've established that I'm not a patient person.

I wasn't completely surprised at the "pre-diabetes" diagnosis. I was easily 80 lb. overweight, not exercising, not eating right, pretty much not paying much attention to my health. There were a couple of weird things going on with me that prompted me to log on to the American Diabetes Association web site several times to read over their list of symptoms. I had several of them. However, I didn't call Harry and say, "Hey, can you test me for diabetes?" I just waited for our next regular checkup where Harry routinely checked my glucose, thyroid and cholesterol.

At the time, I thought his approach was aggressive. You don't have it yet, he told me, but let's treat it like you do. Instead of just telling me to lose weight, eat better and exercise, he told me to do all those things and he put me on oral drugs and had me randomly testing my blood sugar (but didn't tell me *when* to test, so I would eat and test 20 minutes later. Seriously.). Harry's nurse taught me how to use the blood glucose meter (that they didn't even check to see if my insurance covered; it was handed to me because "it uses so much less blood" and I wound up paying $40 for one bottle of test strips) in their office one morning before work. We calibrated with the control solution and the reading was 94. I had had cereal for breakfast that morning. It was probably an hour or so after breakfast and when we tested my sugar I was 204.

"Is that good," I asked Ruth.

"94 was better," she said.

I was to see a nutritionist and diabetes educator, too. By the time I saw those people, I was very angry. I got absolutely nothing out of those meetings. While Harry and Ruth left quite a lot to be desired, I will say that the actual diabetes educator tried to convince me that I wasn't pre-diabetic, that I had type 2 (I had fastings over 200 for heaven's sake!) and I blew her off saying, "But HARRY said it was pre-diabetes!"