Homeless Man “You think you’re better than me?”

Whenever I go to the grocery store I see a homeless person sitting on the bench in front of the store and/or walking around the parking lot.  They always ask me if I can spare some change and sometimes they have a speech that they have said so many times that they repeat it over and over again verbatim.

This one time I went to the store, as I was coming out a homeless man came up to me and asked me for change and I used my same excuse that I use every time “I’m sorry, I used a debit card for my groceries” which is actually true, so it’s not just an excuse.  Well, that pissed him off so much that he started yelling at me and saying that I thought I was better than he was.  Well, that made me feel bad, but at the same time I didn’t have any money to give him so his guilt wasn’t going to do him any good.

I walked over to him and I looked him in the face and I told him that I don’t think that I am better than he is.  I told him that I knew what he was going through because I was homeless when I was a teenager.  If anyone has ever walked a mile in anyone’s shoes it’s me because I went through the same exact thing.  He apologized to me and we stood there talking for a few minutes about what he had said to me.

I wanted to make it clear to him that I don’t think that I am better than he is because I am also poor.  Yes I have a roof over my head, but every dime that I get every month goes to keeping that roof over my head and it also pays for groceries.  I told him that I don’t think that anyone is better than anyone else because we are all the same.  Some are more privileged than others because they were born with money while others were born in a poor family, yet the two are still the same.  They all bleed the same, they all put their pants on one leg at a time, they are all born the same and they all die the same.  We are all but specks in the big picture so who am I to say that I am better than he is just because I have a bag for groceries and he doesn’t have anywhere to sleep?

We talked about the homeless shelter and he told me that it’s usually full.  I told him that there has to be some system for him to get back on his feet, perhaps a place where he can shower and shave and get some clean clothes so he can apply for a job, but he told me he didn’t want to work.  Well, then that’s his problem.

When I was homeless I lived in a shelter and I was damn lucky that they had a shelter for me to live in.  I also had a job so that I could save the money to get a place to live, unfortunately my boyfriend at the time was saving it for me, but he was really spending it as I was giving it to him so that didn’t work out, but I did eventually get out of the homeless shelter and got back on my feet.  If it weren’t for that drive to not want to be homeless, I’d probably still be homeless to this day.

I am very thankful for what I have and I will never in my life think that I am better than anyone else.

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Diabetes Update

Last month my doctor gave me a new medication to help lower my triglycerides called Gemfibrozil 600MG that I take twice a day.  I was told to make sure I take them exactly 12 hours apart for it to be effective.  I created a schedule on my cell phone to remind me twice a day, once at 10am, and then once at 10pm to take my pills.  It has worked out so far and today is day 30.  We went to the doctor’s office on Thursday and they drew blood to test it to see if it helped so I will find out on my next appointment which is May 24th.

In the meantime, he gave me a prescription for a blood glucose meter to check my blood twice a day.  He told me to check it in the morning before I eat and before I have dinner at night.  So far it hasn’t been that high.  Thursday night I did a reading and it was 112 then the next morning it was 132, last night it was 100 and this morning it was 112 again.  Why is that so important?  Well, when they did that blood glucose test a few months ago I was near 200, so this just tells me that I have gone way down.  I have been eating a lot of chocolate lately, this just shows me that it hasn’t really affected me as much as I thought it did.  Although now that I have this meter, I have been staying away from the bad foods because I know if the number goes high, it will make me feel guilty.  Perhaps guilt is the kick in the pants that I needed to get me to stop eating so much sugar.

This is my new meter, the One Touch Ultra 2.  I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it because Chip has a meter, but it’s a different one with different strips.  He couldn’t get the hang of his and he was going to just give me his since he stopped using it, but I didn’t want his, I wanted one of my own because, well I just did :p.

The needles that you use to prick your finger with (in the zippered pouch on the left) aren’t very painful.  The skin on my fingers on my left hand are so thick that even at the highest setting, which is 7, hardly any blood comes out so I have to use my right hand.  I have to really milk the blood out because even at the highest setting it still doesn’t penetrate enough.  So when I say I am thick-skinned, I’m not exaggerating LOL.  My first test was an error because I didn’t milk it enough, but I learned to really get as much blood out as I can so I don’t waste test strips.  The wound heals up so fast that I am only able to get that one little drop, if I try to milk out any more after the test, nothing comes out.  Not that I need to, but I was curious to see if any more would come out for S&G’s.

So this is what it has come to, I have to test my blood every day, as if the constant medication every day for 18 years isn’t enough.  I really hope that the triglyceride medication and the guilt from the meter really helps me lose weight so I am no longer diabetic.  I hope the day finally comes when I no longer have to go through all of this nonsense with health issues, although we both know when that day will occur, and it’s not going to be a good day.  Oh well, life goes on.