My disclaimer is the same thing I've been spouting since blog day 1: Diabetes is a terrible chronic illness to live with. Every fiber of my pancreas, and being, hates it. Diabetes interrupts my life at the most inconvenient of times - during tests, in the middle of work surrounded by children who all want balloons (at.the.same.time.), during walking when I have run out of snacks.
Worrying about where I'm going to get my insulin or test strips from is stressful. It effects almost every decision in my life. Travel is complicated - so is my future career. Will my career provide insurance? How long can I stay out of the country on a trip could be effected - what if I have an emergency? Will my medication be ok? I have to take into account how certain activities will effect my blood sugar - certain exercises and where I inject. Adjust for changing insulin needs in my body. Count every carbohydrate I eat.
But Diabetes, like it or not, has become an integral part of my life. And trust me, when I say that it is integral, I mean I am certain that everyone that knows me is probably sick of my soapboxes on Diabetes, Diabetes treatment, insurance for Diabetics, exercise with Diabetes, what I don't eat with Diabetes, how T1 is different than T2, new clinical trials, etc., etc., etc.
But if you have a disease ticking alongside your life, present in your mind and in your body as often as you blink, and has become that close a part of you -
That's kind of just what happens.
And I'm thankful, in a way. Because it has changed me. I think twice about things. I focus heavily on my health and the things I put into my body. I have an issue to stand for. Something to fight for. I have hope for a cure. I wear blue on World Diabetes Day. I get to have cool experiences where I meet T1's in public or simply have the satisfaction/excitement of seeing someone with an insulin pump or CGM on their person. I am part of a Diabetes Online Community that lends amazing support to this disease we all fight. I can even relate to T2's, in a way, because I understand how hard it is. I'm not just telling them how important it is to check their sugar - I'm living it. This will help me as a healthcare provider someday.
Diabetes, I still hate you. I hate how you level me and turn me into a weaker version of myself. I hate the times I slump to the floor, sweaty and shaky and low, heart racing. I hate waking up in the night drenched in sweat, or the sickly sweet, dry-mouth feel of a high. Being sleep deprived in the morning from it. I hate thinking twice about you when I go out or before I exercise or giving shots in the car over bumpy roads and the big bruises the insulin shots leave on my skin and the pincushions that my finger pads are.
I hate crying over worrying if I'll have insurance or not, or dealing with the frustrations of Medicaid and trying to get coverage and trying to get fair coverage that might actually cover my medications.
I hate doing and being stressed about all of this in addition to all of the other things I am stressed in life about.
I hate feeling as though my life is lived in a glass box and I am trapped. Everyone can see me but they don't know what it's like to have the wall of an invisible chronic illness separating my life experience from theirs, or how quietly, hellishly frustrating it is. T1 Diabetes is a personal hell from which you can never escape - you either live with it, or you die from it.
And that's a solemn thing.
Diabetes turns us all into fighters. Not even because we want to be, but suddenly, we are thrust into a world where we have to be. We fight for ourselves, because no matter how sick your body is telling you you are, you want to spend your days fighting it, telling it it's not so that you don't become sicker. You want to live life just as much to the fullest as everyone else living without a chronic illness. You don't want to be cheated of that life just because you got the short end of the genetic chromosome/environmental factor/whatever causes T1 Diabetes stick.
We fight hard, and we fight relentlessly, because Diabetes takes no break. If you take a break, your body will only suffer more - and the results can be there in mere minutes, hours. It only takes one skipped or forgotten insulin dose to send your sugar skyrocketing, or one forgotten insulin pen to ruin all your plans, or one bruise on your leg or abdomen to make you self conscious about wearing a swimsuit.
We don't become fighters because we want to be, but eventually Diabetes makes you a stronger fighter than you ever were before. You become stronger than you ever thought possible. You push your limits.Even when you are weak, even when this disease tries to break you, everyone that wakes up every morning, day after day with a chronic disease - with any illness or chronic disease - is making a choice to give it their all. We don't do it for recognition, most of us don't get recognition at all. We just do what we do because we share a common thing: a love for life, and a thankfulness for it that transcends the difficulties and pushes us forward. I believe that anyone that has to fight this disease has at least a whisper of that common thing within them.
And me? I'm thankful for that opportunity to be a fighter. I am an advocate, an educator, a self-made expert on this disease. I am one of the mere few that has the burden of fighting it, but I stand for something bigger than myself for doing so.
And wow, isn't that something to be excited for and truly thankful about.
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