A nurse called me at home. “Hello, Mr. Stinton. We’d like to run your blood test again.”

That’s the kind of statement that will shove a fist in your gut real quick.

• • •

Partway through college, I developed a flutter in my left ear, a painless, tiny muscle spasm of some sort, like a little moth was trapped in there. At first, it happened randomly, but it eventually developed into a reaction to certain dissonant noises, like dial tones.

For a while, it was easy to compensate: move the phone to the other ear. But eventually, as happens to all college students, I entered the workforce, where I found myself in a cubicle surrounded by sudden bursts of dial tones like artillery fire through my neighbors’ phone speakers.

Eventually, I saw a neurologist, who thought I should try gabapentin, an anti-seizure medication.

Gabapentin’s most common side effects are dizziness, drowsiness, and a “swelling in the extremities.” Luckily, I didn’t experience any of these. Luckier still, the only side effect I did experience was the ability to sleep through the night.

I’d suffered from insomnia for years, sometimes thrashing around in a half-conscious state, cursing my body for its inability to drift off. But the morning after I had my first hit of gabapentin, I woke up in a body that was eerily still, like I’d switched it with someone else’s.

I looked down at my alien calmness and was flooded with such grateful optimism that sleep instantly became my primary reason for taking gabapentin, and my (now nearly nonexistent) ear flutter became an afterthought.

However, gabapentin is processed through the kidneys, so my neurologist assigned me a blood test every six months just to make sure it’s sloughing out of me properly.

And one test a couple years later showed elevated levels of blood sugar.

• • •

The nurse hadn’t sounded overly concerned. But my maternal grandmother had diabetes, though I believe she only had to monitor her diet, not inject herself with insulin or avoid sugar altogether.

But my mind kept flashing to the episode of Night Court where Roz discovers she has diabetes and, after an overdose of insulin, breaks into tears at the thought of never having another hot fudge sundae.

The canned studio audience responds, “Awwww…”

That’s one of maybe five moments I can remember from Night Court. Even as a junior high school student, I saw the tragedy inherent in it, and it seared itself into my brain.

(I also remember a hot dog being Heimlich’d into Dan’s coffee, and Harry, in a moment of solitary prayer, thanking God for the existence of Larry Bird.)

I didn’t make the follow-up appointment right away. I think I wanted to keep the results at arm’s length, leaving them indeterminate for a little while. Schrödinger's diabetes.

In the ensuing week, I became hyperaware of everything my body did. Am I peeing a lot? Yes… Yes, I think I am! But then, I’ve been drinking a lot of water. But isn’t that just the kind of thing a diabetic in denial would say?

Also, I couldn’t decide if I should spend that week eliminating candy from my system in favor of a mega-dose of fruits and vegetables, or go on a chocolate binge to rival a nutritionist’s bachelor party. I veered between the two extremes on alternating days. I’d trained my body to crave chocolate after every lunch. What sort of joy could life hold for me without it?

Meanwhile, my girlfriend’s roommate gave me several bags of sugar-free candy: Jolly Ranchers, LiveSavers, and gum. I worked my way through a few pieces, letting each dissolve into an aspartame afterburn on my tongue. Was this my future?

Finally, I made the call for the new blood test. The nurse gave me some preparatory instructions.

“You know not to eat anything for 12 hours leading up to the test, right?”

I squinted at the ceiling. “Yyyyyyes…” I replied.

After hanging up, I tried to remember if I’d followed that rule before my previous blood test. Hadn’t I gone out to breakfast right beforehand?

I had! What did I order?

Ah yes. Chocolate chip pancakes.

• • •

The morning of the new blood test, I shuffled into the medical center, my brain sugar-free, caffeine-free and food-free. I looked with new foreboding at the needle that was inserted into my arm, hoping not to become too familiar with such things any time soon.

A day or two later, the results arrived in the mail. At the bottom of a printout of indecipherable numbers and codes, the nurse had written by hand: “Results normal.” Relief flowed into my stomach like a hot fudge sundae, and I celebrated by taking the sugar-free Jolly Ranchers to work the next day and leaving them in the break room.