What Do You Think I Am, a Pancreas?

I have been out of the hospital for over two weeks now.

Currently, life has fallen into a steady rhythm, and for the first time in a long time, it feels almost normal.

Sure, there are those times when I sit down to eat my lunch, finish my sandwich, and realize I forgot to take my Novolog Insulin.

Times when I'm chilling out, listening to music, and realize I'm 30 minutes late to take my Lantus Insulin.

Times when I'll sit up and my heart starts beating fast, my legs grow weak, my arms grow shaky as my body begins to battle hypoglycemia yet again.

The moments I get frustrated because I know that I shouldn't eat as many carbs in that meal as I want to; when I have to skip out on the sweet tea or get guilted into getting a salad instead of fries on the side.

The tiring moments when I have to search my room for extra test strips, remember where I put the cap to my needle syringe, and poke my finger three times with the lancet before I can get enough blood for a meter test.

And then there's the worry.

The worry of how I'll ever be able to pay for all of this stuff.

The worry that though life seems normal now, there are serious long-term complications that can arise - and are more likely to arise - the longer I have diabetes.

Lately it's been this second one that's been nagging at me. I guess in a way, it might be a blessing that I didn't get diabetes until I was older. My hope is that perhaps it will bide me sometime before any possible complications start rearing their ugly heads. Beyond that is my hope that complications will never arise at all. I just want to be healthy. Is that so much to ask? Apparently, it is. You never realize what a blessing it is to be in good health until you aren't anymore. Until you can never go back.

If I was back to my normal life and didn't have diabetes anymore, I would wake up every day thanking God and thinking that life could be a whole lot worse: "At least I don't have Diabetes."

I think the hardest part about having it is knowing that there is no cure.

Guess I'll have to think of a new terminal illness to be grateful about not having.

Truth: I'm scared. Still.

I'm scared I'll lose my vision, or die of kidney or heart failure. All possible complications.

I want to be a mother someday, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to ever manage my blood sugar well enough to be safe to have children. That I'll mess up. That I'd be putting an innocent life in danger, that wanting to have kids with diabetes is selfish because it is very difficult and complicated. That alone just makes me want to cry sometimes. Why, why can't I be normal and healthy like so many others? I just wonder that sometimes. I know it is not my fault, I know it is not what I did. But sometimes I wonder why I had to be the one, out of so many healthy billions of people, to get diabetes.

To err is to be human - it is impossible to explain to someone without diabetes how difficult it is to manage for yourself what the body is supposed to do for you without a second thought.

It comes down to the fact that: I am not a pancreas.

How I wish I could go through life again, without a worry for my health!

Now it is a constant worry.

I know that I can't and shouldn't let worry get ahold of me.

And it's all part of the process of first being diagnosed.

But will the worry go away?

Or will it always be there, always nagging, always in the back of my mind, or in the front, like it is today?

Am I justified to worry?

I think so.

I just pray that God watches over me and that I can overcome it...

I could use all the prayer I can get right now.