We can work out how much we fork out to pay for diabetes.

It’s expensive. Of course it is. When I added up the costs earlier this year for a Diabetes Blog Week post, I estimated our family budget takes a hit of about $6,500 (excluding private health insurance) each and every year. That’s a lot of cups of coffee and a lot of pairs of boots.

But if I talk about the financial burden of diabetes alone, I’m selling short just how expensive the condition really is. The dollars I fork out each year are only one part of what it costs me – although it is a lot easier to quantify.

Because, there’s time. So much time.

We sit in waiting rooms, travel to appointments, take time out to make calls to make those appointments, call the pharmacy to order insulin and supplies, visit the pharmacy to collect insulin and supplies. Our prescriptions run out and we have to hastily find a time and way to refill them. We sit on the phone waiting to receive pathology results. We take time out of work time, out of family time, out of social time, out of our own time because diabetes demands it.

And then there is time dedicated to the day-to-day minutiae of ‘doing diabetes’. The time it takes to check our BGLs, or change a pump line, or site a new CGM sensor. Then there is the time to look at data, and act upon it. We lose time to treat lows, treat highs, watch CGM traces, question what to do with random numbers. We build up a sleep debt that never gets repaid, no matter how many early nights or nanna naps we try to sneak in.

It adds up. It all adds up – slowly and deliberately until suddenly we realise just how much time it takes. I tried to give a dollar amount to the time I spend doing diabetes, and stopped when I realised just how terrifying it was. If I was able to dedicate that much more time to paid work, I’d be spending a lot more time in New York each year. And then I got depressed and decided to stop adding up the hours I spend on diabetes.

But still, this is just scraping the surface. The money it costs and the time it takes are significant and must not be underestimated. However, the harder to measure personal costs and emotional burden should not be forgotten either.

I don’t really know how to gauge the extent of those costs. I don’t know how to quantify the psychological impact of diabetes – most of the time I can barely qualify it. But I know it’s significant.

During this month, there are a lot of efforts to try to explain diabetes to those not living with it. JDRF’s T1D Footprint calculator is doing the rounds again, and it’s an effective way to put numbers to just some of the tasks we do to manage our diabetes. I really like they’ve added an extra element to their social media activation: a photo frame with the words ‘T1DYouDon’tSee’ which acknowledges our invisible condition.

Because that’s the thing about diabetes. We can tally up hours and dollars, but measuring the stuff we can’t see is a whole lot harder. And for me, that’s where the real expense in diabetes lies.