"You Have Diabetes? Oh... I'm sorry."

Here's a fact that might make you laugh:

I'm still quite afraid of needles. 

It's flu season, and I work at a nursing home, so they encourage we get the flu shot a. to protect our patients and b. to protect ourselves from bugs that patients tend to get this time of year. And of course, health care professionals always recommend us lucky immunocompromised patients get it, because, you know. Poorly-functioning T-cells, and the like.

I was lamenting about this to the nurse who administered it, having cornered me in the office as I was searching for a patient chart and asking me if I was there to get the shot. I laughed to her as I rolled up my sleeve, methodically tapping my foot and staring at the wall, intentionally trying to distract myself. "It's sad I get nervous for these," I said. "Seeing as I give shots 6 times a day or so." 

"You have Diabetes?" She asked. "Type 1," I nodded.

"Oh, man." "I'm sorry."

I never really know what to say to people who tell me they're sorry that I have a disease out of my control. It's such a human reaction, isn't it? To sympathize. I often don't know what to say to patients myself when I see how they're suffering with particularly difficult health conditions. "I'm sorry" is our (perfectly normal and understandable and okay) attempt at empathy. On the receiving end, though, it's hard to process that, sometimes. Which is why I try with my patients to tell them that I'm there to help them function as their best selves despite whatever condition(s) might be in their chart. Back to the fact that we are more than our diagnoses.

I suppose, in my case, it's a hard thing for me to reply to because I didn't...do anything to cause this. It just happened to me, and so it feels more like a divinely intended occurrence or random turn of fate. And yes, I've spent more than my fair share of time being angry over my diagnosis. Feeling sorry for myself. Wondering why I was the one who got it out of the other statistically lucky ones. There's no answer to that question, of course. You don't get to choose. There's many things you have control of in your life - but this was never one of them. I consider it my proverbial cross to bear, in a way, one that I've learned helps me connect with people in difficult times and given me a depth to my life that has humbled me and shown me the fearful feeling of my own fragility and morbidity. So, partly, me not knowing how to reply is because I've already been through the mental leg work of lamenting my loss of former health - coming out on the other end of that, and also reshaping my identity around this disease I call my own.

It never becomes something you're "used" to, I think, and I always try to make that distinction when people tell me that injecting needles each day must be horrible but that I must be used to it by now. I'm never used to it - it will always be a deviation from the normal life I grew up with. Accustomed, yes. Adjusted, yes. Come to terms with, yes. It's a battle I fight daily, and I'm okay with that now. Because I've come out on the other end of that difficult time, accepted it, and become (what I feel) is vastly stronger for it.

Of course, my viewpoints on the acceptance of illness and hardship might be way different than yours -- and that's okay, too. Maybe, "I'm sorry", is just what you need to hear. I know I did, at one point. Especially early on. And sometimes, when I'm going through a particularly tough time, it's what I need to hear, still. This is simply how I feel when people say that to me, which often happens when I tell new people about my condition.

So I just shrug. "No need to be sorry," I say. "It's just how it happens."