Old Diabetic Lacy and Now.

It's September, and I've been getting into the swing of my second year of physical therapy school. I was looking over my blog today, trying to find some inspiration to write something, and started looking across old drafts of posts I never published. It's weird to me, thinking back and realizing it's been 4 years and 5 months since becoming part of the very exclusive Diabetes Club. I live a pretty comfortable life right now. I still have insulin in the fridge, and although it's dwindling, I know it will be ok. I can even go see my Nurse Practitioner at school to write me prescriptions for insulin, which saves a little money, when I start to need it. I can get 100 test strips (albeit for the cheap meter) for $16 on amazon, and I still think that I've only gone through 4 or 5 boxes of needles and only a box or two of lancets since being diagnosed (seriously, I know it's bad but I never change those things). So I'm feeling pretty good. My Diabetes has seemed pretty tame with a comfortable 35 g of Lantus everyday to keep me from having to use as much Humalog to cover carbs and corrections, and my exercising more has helped keep my levels in check, too, so right now I'm coasting pretty easy. In fact, sometimes I even relax and don't think much about my Diabetes, which is nice. Except when I'm low. Then I still hate my body. But I look back at how far I've come, and I think I've made good progress in coping. Which is why I'm posting an old draft I never published back from years ago. To remember that though this disease is hard as ever, I've come a long way. Enjoy.

                                                                  

Diabetes is a largely invisible disease.

People see us and assume that because we look okay, because we appear to function normally, that Diabetes is not that big of a deal.

Diabetes gets downplayed because it is not cancer, it is not AIDS, it is not something you can often visibly see or tangibly touch. 

You could look at us and think, 'Hey, they look normal. Diabetes is not that bad." 

And if you do think those things, then you've got it all wrong.

Our struggles more often than not go on in silence. In the solitude of our rooms, in our beds at night, in our minds throughout the day, in the screen of a glucose meter.

We are largely silent sufferers, millions connected by the likeness that we share: The likeness of a single, life-changing disease.

Perhaps your view of Diabetes would be different if you saw what I see.

If you lived in my life, if you walked in my shoes.

If you felt the prick of a needle on your skin, or the weakness of low blood sugar, or the soreness on the tips of your fingers from all of the blood tests.

You don't see

The tears you cry in the hospital room, the ones you waited to cry until you were all alone. Because you wanted people to think that you were strong.

The discouragement you feel when your blood sugars are not where you know that they should be.

The guilt that even the simple act of eating a banana or half a sandwich, much less a caramel frappuccino or a piece of cake, can bring on.

The heartbreak you feel when your hopes and dreams go out the window when you learn of your diagnosis; When, suddenly, all of your plans must now be re-calculated, re-drawn, according to Diabetes and the limits it imposes. Which, regardless of what others might say, it does impose.

The worry you feel about the future, about the complications, about if you will lose your vision or need a kidney transplant, if you will ever be able to have kids, if you will ever live to be 100, or 70, or be alive when you wake up in the morning.
The ever-present desperate longing, the need deep inside, for a cure.
The calculator inside your head that carefully counts and then re-counts the carbs in every meal you are about to eat.
The potent, synthetic, bandaid-y plastic smell of insulin five times a day that you grow sick of.
The drastic difference between the bills and the amount of money you have to pay them.
The exhaustion of knowing that if there is never a cure, this will be your life until the day that you die.


Diabetes does not take a break. It does not call in sick for work, it does not go on vacations or take time off. If I am a safe, Diabetes is the 24-hour security guard.
And it is exhausting.
Diabetes doesn't wait for you, it doesn't ask you how you feel.
It shows no mercy, it has a cruel sense of humour.
It possesses biting sarcasm, it writes all of its own rules.
As much as Doctors claim to understand Diabetes, I often feel like there is so little known about it.

I don't know why, out of the millions, I was the one with the faulty immune system, with the faulty coding in my genes, why I was the ticking time bomb.
Doctor's can't tell me.
I don't know, if I ever choose to have children, whether or not they will have diabetes too.
No one can say. No one can predict.
I don't know why sometimes, even when I do everything right, my blood sugars will still zig zag up and down like a child's scribbles.
Diabetes is an imprecise science.
And I don't know if, even with all my hope, there will ever be a cure, a way to end this disease.

But I will never give up.
No matter what they say.
I will always have hope for a cure.
Until my dying day.
I may live with it now,
But I will never stop believing
That I will not die with diabetes.

You don't see what I see, most of you don't.
But we need our cure, too.
We need it for ourselves,
For the ones we love.
For our families, our friends, for the people we see on the streets.
For the millions of us who fight this disease every day.