Dear MDI's,
I remember the sun as it filtered through the small window of the doctor's office and onto the table. On it held an orange, a cup of water, and a few littered syringes. My mother, my dad, and my diabetes educator sat around the table. "This is how you do it," she showed us all, injecting the syringe into the orange. "The orange is similar to human skin. Porous," she said. I shed a great deal of tears before I could give the injections without cringing. I was so nervous, fixated on how much it would hurt. But my desire to live overcame my fear.
8 years of my life, so long now it seems, a needle has never been far from me. Car rides spent trying to angle myself right while driving to inject if I am in a rush in between gigs... running out of insulin in my pen on accident and searching for a spare syringe to try and draw the last few units out of the empty pen. Trying to remember to inject 15 minutes before mealtimes. Bruises and searching for new injection sites while accommodating hundreds of different types of outfits. Getting blood on white clothing, always, inevitably. Bent syringe needles. Sticking insulin in coolers when going out to avoid it getting ruined from the heat. Waking up in the middle of the night to test and inject correction doses. Trying frustratedly to avoid nighttime highs from intense workouts. Double injecting for pizza 2 hours after eating it (still a pain).
1-2 long acting injections daily. Various short acting injections - one for each meal, any snacktimes, any corrections. A minimum of 4-5 shots a day. 8 years. Over 15,000 injections in 8 years. 15,000! What inch of my skin hasn't had a needle put through it, at this point? I have always hated it - and even when I find a comfortable piece of skin to inject, I have to rotate it, to avoid lypohypertrophy (a lump under the skin caused by accumulation of extra fat at the site of many subcutaneous injections of insulin). A condition just for us diabetics.
This has been my life as I have known it, and I've gotten comfortable with it. I feel nervous embracing a new change, and I desperately hope I'll like it, and won't want to switch back. MDI's are a pain in the ass, but they're also in my comfort zone. There's a certain freedom to having nothing attached to you... and pumping is certainly expensive, even with good insurance. But I'm hoping I can get even tighter control of my A1C using one, and that it will be worth it. Truth be told, I'm very nervous! I'm nervous the pod will hurt to insert. You stick it on your skin, and then you start the sensor, and it automatically injects for you. That's silly, as I inject myself multiple times a day as is, but I'm nervous all the same. It's another thing to get used to. Another thing to plan for on trips out of town. Another thing to pack for. Another way that Diabetes is a constant presence in my life. But, that's the way it's gone for 8 years, isn't it? Learning and growing despite my illness. Pushing through, steadfastly, despite the daily pain, the extra steps, the anxiety, the blood, the bruises. This is the price of my life, and it's always been worth it, even though it's harder than before.
So, here's to a new adventure! Make it make life even better - and the space Diabetes shares with me, smaller.
No comments:
Post a Comment