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Two and a half minutes. I reckon that’s how long it took before the tears started.
I walked into my endo’s office and we exchanged pleasantries. I’ve been seeing her for over thirteen years now and there is an easy banter that we fall into.
I sat down and said, ‘I’m going to need tissues. Where are the tissues?’ And that was all it took. No one had even said the word ‘diabetes’ yet.
‘I’ve got no idea where to start. Things have been terrible. I’m all over the place. I feel like I have dropped the ball – really dropped the ball and I don’t know what to do to get back on top of things.’ I briefly explained the burnout, the rough couple of years, the grief I still feel shrouded in at times following the miscarriage. ‘Even when I feel like I am seeing some light, I fall too easily back. My self-care gets forgotten very easily. Very quickly. I can’t seem to get over my miscarriage and there are days that I feel so weighed down by the loss.’
She listened without interrupting, letting me blurt out what I needed to, sniffling my way through grottily. And then she waited. So I filled the silence.
‘I know that I am being too tough on myself,’ (there was a tiny, barely noticeable nod from her at this point). ‘And I know I would be quick to point out to anyone else saying these things that they need to be a little kinder to themselves. But I don’t give myself the same breaks. I feel like I’m letting myself down.
‘I don’t know where to begin. I didn’t get my blood work done before coming here. I just didn’t have it in me. I don’t want to see any results. But I am so angry at myself for not having it done and for not keeping on top of my complications screenings – I have never, ever been behind on this before. I’m even scared to have my BP taken because I am terrified that it is going to be high. And then I’m catastrophising that into equalling kidney problems, and eye problems. Even though I know my eyes are fine. That is one thing that I am up to date with. But I am anxious about my kidneys. I don’t know why.
‘I wrote about this yesterday on my blog. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to see you. And I really like you! But I don’t want to be here and having to think about my diabetes – and how little I’ve been thinking about my diabetes.’
The words dribbled out of me, sentences running into each other. Until I stopped. I wiped my eyes with a tissue and took a deep breath. We spent a while not talking about diabetes – instead discussing other things. We chatted about our trip to New York, the kidlet, my work. My tears had dried, the scrunched up, soggy tissue deposited into my bag.
‘Okay. Jump up on the bench and I’ll just check your BP,’ she then said. And I did. And it was fine. In fact it was better than fine. I asked her to repeat the numbers to me and a lump formed again at the back of my throat, and tears pricked my eyes, but I wiped them away. They’re just numbers. I know they’re just numbers. But they were not scary numbers. They were numbers that gave me a little confidence to find out more.
‘I suppose I should get weighed,’ I said. ‘Actually, do I need to?’
‘No. Not unless you want to.’ This led to a discussion about being weighed and how fraught that is. I decided that I wasn’t really ready to get on the scales. There was nothing I needed to know or do about my weight and it would make no difference to anything.
‘I need an A1c. And a coeliac screening too,’ I said.
‘We’ll run all the usual things and take it from there,’ she said.
When I walked out of her consultation room, I felt relieved. The insurmountable ‘I need to get back on track properly’ that had been my mantra in the lead up to the appointment had subsided and was replaced with a gentle list of a few things that I could do in the short term. I had some goals, I have some plans. I have another appointment in four weeks.
I drove home and walked into the house. ‘How was your appointment?’ asked Aaron. He knew how anxious I had been feeling about it. ‘It was good. My BP is awesome. I’m going back in four weeks.’ I changed the subject. That was all I needed for today. I didn’t want to speak about it anymore.
Cookies!
I’ve just had a wonderful long weekend where pretty much every moment we were home, the oven was on with cakes, biscuits and pies filling the house with beautiful smells.
I spent the time out of the house doing the things that build me up – playing in the park and soaking up the sun, visiting bookshops, going to galleries, drinking coffee. We added artwork to our SHAG collection and I added a couple of new bracelets to my Kate Spade arsenal. I danced to Taylor Swift in the kitchen with my girl and watched Better Call Saul with my boy. Family dropped in, cups of tea were drunk, neighbours were visited. I took a Twitter break. We chased the moon. International Women’s Day was marked.
It was a good weekend – a great weekend.
Now showing on the wall in our living room.
And yet.
I start the week with a ball in the pit of my stomach and am incredibly distracted. I have an appointment tomorrow with my endo. And I am terrified.
It’s been too long since I last saw her. And if truth be told, I really don’t want to see her. I don’t want to sit there and discuss diabetes – my diabetes – and talk about how I have really dropped the ball. (Understatement.)
I don’t want to talk about the burnout that has overwhelmed me for so long and even though I feel myself emerging – there are glimpses of brightness – I don’t want to admit just how much it has affected my diabetes self-care.
I don’t want to discuss complications screenings. I don’t want to talk about them. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to face things.
I don’t want to sit in her office and cry, which I know is exactly what I will do the moment I sit down and she asks me how I have been in her incredibly non-judgemental, beautiful, concerned and caring way.
New jangly bracelets.
Throughout the last few days, in the middle of all the lovely stuff, I have paused and taken stock and thought of my upcoming appointment. I have thought about how it will play out. I have considered how, after the tears and admissions of feelings of guilt, I will leave feeling stronger and more determined – I always do after seeing my endo. But I am still scared and anxious about it all. I know that the truth of what has been going on scares me and the possibility of what has been going wrong. All of this terrifies me beyond belief.
I needed the long weekend to build me up and help with my resilience stores and I feel that it certainly did that. My support network is strong and I have people around me who are so gentle in the way the support and encourage me to live well with diabetes.
So with this in mind, I am focusing on getting through the next couple of days. And what happens after my appointment.
An expensive trip to Readings
A full biscuit tin, an armful of noisy bangles, a library of new books and a gorgeous new Josh Agle artwork on the wall are all helping and keeping me grounded. All things I need as I face a tough week.
It’s #DBlogCheck day. Read about it here and go and give some love to – and leave a comment on – some of the diabetes blogs out there that help make up this wonderful community.
I am on a 7am flight to Adelaide for a day-long meeting. This is just plain rude and given that I’m on about 5 hours sleep (self-inflicted), I am coffee-d up to my eyeballs just so I can stay awake.
So, on the flight, sitting in seat 15B, I have had a little snooze, (maintaining my ‘only ever been awake for take off twice’ record by being sound asleep as we taxied and took off), and am now staring, zombie-like, at my iPad trying to make sense of the words I am typing. (Good luck to the nosey woman in seat 15C who is totally not surreptitiously reading what I am typing.)
And I’m yawning. A lot.
Recently, I have noticed a new hypo symptom. When low – having dropped slowly, I get very yawn-y. It happens completely out of the blue – a sudden onset of lazy, gaping oscitancy.
The first time this happened, I was with friends and all of a sudden, it started. I couldn’t stop yawning. One after another after another. I kept apologising, saying that the last few late nights must be catching up with me.
Shortly after, I checked my BGL and I was low – not staggeringly so, but low nonetheless. As soon as I treated and my BGLs rose, the yawning stopped and I felt fine.
It happened a few more times before I put two and two together. Sudden yawns = slowly decreasing BGLs.
When it happens, there are absolutely no other symptoms. The shaky, sweaty adrenaline rush hypos that come from either a rapid drop, or waking up suddenly overnight are completely absent. Instead, it’s a listless, snail-like feeling of sluggishness and a realisation that I am yawning. A lot.
This new low symptom is manageable and now that I have worked it out, I can use it quite effectively. As soon as I notice the yawns have started, I treat.
As someone who at times has impaired hypo awareness – love it when a BGL check shows a 2.5mmol/l and I am feeling perfectly fine – I’ll take any symptoms at all. And for me those hypos that sneak up on me are particularly symptom-less. So this is quite a welcome new development.
Of course, on days like today – when my day started on an early morning flight after a night of minimal sleep – it gets confusing. I’m yet to work out how to differentiate if a yawn is a hint I’m low. Or a silent scream for coffee.
I’m home today with a bug. Bored out of my brain, I’ve spent too much time scrolling mindlessly through Facebook. This is never a good idea when I have time on my hands.
Usually when using Facebook, I don’t click through on things that are either stupid, or about the colour of a dress. (#TotallyTeamBlueAndBlack) I have learnt that looking at anything that is going to trigger eye rolls and anger in me is better left alone.
But today, with wasting time being about as much as I can manage, I saw something flash up on one of the pages that I follow that I ordinarily would not have clicked on. Ordinarily, I would have muttered under my breath about lunatic posts and moved on.
The post was extolling the evils of coffee. Now, caffeine is my drug of choice. I can’t live without it. Wait, that should probably read insulin. INSULIN is my drug of choice and I can’t live without it.
But coffee is my heart starter; it’s lure is what gets me out the door in the morning. The first sip of coffee each day is a jolt that kick starts me into a functioning, coherent human being. Or, at least the illusion of one.
So, I don’t take kindly to anyone telling me that it is the root of all evil.
This is where the ‘time on my hands’ thing went wrong. I clicked through to the source of this information and found myself in the middle of a site dedicated to telling the world – nay, lying to the world – about how pretty much everything is killing us.
In addition to caffeine being the reason for our untimely deaths, here are just a few other things that are sending us to early graves:
- Vaccines (especially the HPV vaccination)
- Medications
- Antibiotics
- Red meat
- Dairy foods
- Doughnuts
- Gluten
- Caesarean births
- Doctors and other health professionals
- Hospitals
- Sugar (of course)
- Grains
When I got to a lovely poster that the site encouraged we print out and stick on our (nothing but organic kale and kumbucha tea containing) refrigerator, I knew it was time to throw my iPad across the room. The poster claimed that that ‘food is healthcare and medicine is sickcare’.
Every day, more and more of these sites crop up. Once the domain of pseudo-healthcare professionals, now anyone with a green smoothie maker and Internet access can set themself up as a ‘wellness consultant‘, create a website and convince readers of the credibility of the lunacy presented.
After losing about 30 minutes of my life clicking through the site, I put my iPad down. I thought about what I need in my life to feel well and healthy. I thought about how lucky I am to be able to access medication and devices and coffee and fresh food and doughnuts and a flu shot later this month and our healthcare system.
These are the things that are well-making. All these things. The choices I make, the decisions I make, the things I do. Nothing is killing me, there is no conspiracy by anyone to make me sick. It’s just common sense. Something that is sadly lacking from any of these so-called wellness sites.
Last Friday evening, I checked my BGL. As the result flashed on the screen, I stopped for a minute, thinking.
I scrolled back through the results for the last two days. And found there were not many at all: I had four results from Thursday morning; nothing after that on Thursday; one on Friday morning (just before driving my daughter to school); and the one I had just done.
It had been a difficult couple of days. I was distracted, which had resulted in diabetes falling to the wayside.
I took a deep breath. This wasn’t something to worry about. It had been a relatively simple day, diabetes-wise. I hadn’t had any nasty hypos or felt myself going high. I’d barely eaten, which actually would have helped keep my BGLs steady. Nothing terrible had happened.
All in all, I wasn’t worried about the 36 hours of minimal self-care.
But I was worried at how easily I had slipped back into it.
I’ve been working really hard at getting my diabetes management back to a level that makes me feel content. I THINK about my diabetes more; I’ve given it more focus.
And because I truly believe that numbers are nothing more than a snapshot of what is going on at that exact moment in time, the actual results are not the aim of the game for me. The aim is to increase the number of checks and then to respond accordingly.
Out-of-target numbers don’t get me upset or angry. I just deal with them, pleased that I actually know what is going on!
This is progress. And it’s good.
What is not good is the ease in which I just stopped. Or at least, cut back and stopped thinking about diabetes. My mind was overly occupied with other things. Amongst all the background noise, diabetes slipped.
I have come to understand that the continuum of diabetes burnout does not start and end at the point where self-care slips or stops and then starts again. There is a slide towards burnout and coming out of it takes time. And if the burnout has been going on for a while – as in my case – habits need to be broken, or new ones need to be made.
The habits I had formed of minimal self-care come back very easily if I am distracted. Losing focus of diabetes happens effortlessly.
Managing diabetes is about so much more than the numbers and the checking and the self-care. It is about perspective and focus. The positive in this is that I quickly realised I’d started to lose focus. And even more positive is that I wanted to rein it back in.
A couple of weeks ago, I met a young child with diabetes. This was one cute kid who was clearly going to be boss of the world when she grew up. And a zoo keeper. I know this because she told me as much.
She has lived with type 1 diabetes for over half her life – she told me that too. And she also told me that now, as a big grade one kid, there were things that she was doing to take care of her diabetes on her own.
‘Want me to show you?’ She asked me.
‘You bet!’ I said
She checked her BGL for me, talking me through it. ‘I use this to get the blood out of my finger. And then the blood goes here. Did you hear that beep? And here is the number. It says 8. That means I don’t need to do anything right now.’
Then she went off on a tangent and counted to 125 for me, which I told her was very impressive.
She showed me her pump and was very excited when I showed her mine, although disappointed that mine was boring and charcoal while hers was covered in a bright pink skin. ‘You should buy one for your pump. Your pump is not very interesting. It would be much nicer if you looked at something bright instead of boring. And more fashionable.’ I think she tut-tutted me as she shook her head at my lack of inventiveness when it came to pump decoration.
I won back some points when I showed her the bright purse I keep my meter in. ‘I guess that’s nice,’ she told me, and then found something else to show me.
‘I eat these lollies sometimes when I am low. My teacher has a big jar of them in the cupboard in the classroom. She has to keep them on the top shelf because I caught Matty eating them one day. He got in trouble, but it’s not his fault that he doesn’t know that I need them when I go low. Where do you keep your lollies?’
I told her that I have them in my bag, usually. And on my bedside table. ‘In a jar with a blue lid’, I explained, suddenly desperate to win some cred with this kid!
She nodded and seemed to approve of this answer. ‘Blue is okay,’ she announced.
‘Do you know that I am going to be a zoo keeper when I grow up?’ She asked me.
‘That sounds like a great idea and a very cool job,’ I said, and I told her that I have always wanted a pet tiger.
‘You can’t have a pet tiger,’ she said, sternly. ‘They are not good pets. You should know that.’
I told her she was right.
‘If I’m not a zoo keeper, I might be a doctor. I’ll help kids with diabetes. That would be good too.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Maybe you might find a cure for diabetes.’
She looked at me with what I can only describe as the sassiest look I have ever seen.
She shook her head. And spoke to me very slowly, like I was a bit simple, staring at me straight in the eye.
‘Why does everyone think that a cure is the best thing? As long as I can be a zoo keeper, I don’t care about having diabetes. Tigers don’t care if I have diabetes.’
This kid? She is 6 years old. And she has it together more than most adults I know.
The plan was simple – take the train into White Night; start at the northern end of the city, head south, check out all the attractions we came across and jump back on the train when we’d had enough. I figured that 11pm would be that point.
As it turns out, I was sitting in Hamer Hall at 11pm, watching Ghostly Machines and not even starting to feel at the ‘enough’ point.
In fact, I had my second wind!
Only an hour earlier, however, I was sure I was about to fall asleep standing up.
Around 7pm, just before we left home, I checked my BGL. It was sitting quite pretty at 6.2mmol/l. But because I am an incredibly smart and experienced person with diabetes, two thoughts ran through my mind:
- It’s warm outside – really warm. I will probably – nay, certainly – go low.
- Don’t forget hypo supplies.
Fast forward about five minutes as we were walking to the train station. ‘Hey,‘ I turned to my beautiful friend, neighbour and partner in missing islet cell crime. ‘Do you have any hypo stuff? I left mine on the kitchen bench.’ (See? Incredibly smart and experienced with diabetes.)
I was fine – I wasn’t low. But as soon as we got off the train, I decided that the three kids’ idea (i.e. constant pleas) of slurpees was a really, really, really good one and would serve two purposes – cool us down and stave off any approaching lows.
Half an hour post slurpee, I checked my BGL and the sugary drink had done more than prevent a low – 22.1mmol/l. Nice! Really nice.
So I bolused accordingly and didn’t think about it again for a bit, in the back of my mind thinking that I needed to make sure that the correction bolus did its trick.
We meandered along the Yarra, marvelled at the beautiful lily pads and watched them light up as dusk hit.
We watched the Bollywood dancers sashaying to wonderful music as they floated down the river on a barge, flashes of light flooding the Yarra’s banks in pink.
And we stopped by the food trucks for a quick snack. It was about 9.30pm by this time and we were all absolutely killing it! There was no sign of tiring yet. And I was feeling fine, so I figured that my BGL was fine.
Next stop was the National Gallery of Victoria and it was here, sitting on a carousel in the foyer area that a wave of exhaustion hit. It was sudden – so sudden! I started yawning and couldn’t stop. My legs felt heavy and my head was fuzzy.
‘I think I’m fading,’ I announced. ‘How about we stop for a coffee?’
We made our way to the café outside the Arts Centre. My head was getting fuzzier by the minute and the yawning was incessant. My mouth felt dry.
We sat down, waiting for our drinks and I pulled out my meter. ‘I think I must be really high. My body feels like lead. My BGLs must be stratospheric!’
Because I am smart and good at diabetes, I knew this would be the case. My mouth was dry, my legs were aching. I knew that there would be a number in the 20s. I knew that I was going to need a super correction bolus and two litres of water to deal with the thirst. In fact, I thought I could probably just pull out my pump and give myself a few units of insulin, up my basal rate for an hour or two and then I’d be right.
Because I’m good at diabetes.
As it turned out, I’m really not. My meter read 2.9mmol/l. I grabbed the soft drink that had just been placed on the table, gave an apologetic look to the kid who was about to drink it, (kids of mums with diabetes don’t even look phased when this happens!), and skulled half of it.
I dumped three sugars in my coffee and skulled that too.
I wasn’t high. I was low. Really low.
It was hot, we had been walking, I hadn’t had a drink since the slurpee (about two and a half hours earlier) – all things I didn’t factor into contributing to feeling thirst.
Within about 10 minutes, I was buzzing again. The yawning had stopped. I was wide awake and sugar-fuelled!
We headed into Hamer Hall and watched an incredible show of light, sound and movement on the empty stage. And then walked along Flinders Street, the beautiful old buildings lit up like magic. We wandered through a Melbourne laneway, lay down on the cobblestones and watched the projection on the roof of a building. And we heard more music and saw more movement.
I checked my BGL when we got home at around 1am: 6.2mmol/l. Exactly the same as when we left home. In six hours, my BGLs had put on a show, fluctuating between 2.9 and 22.1, starting and ending in the same place. I still had a great night. I still saw some amazing things. White Night 2015 was fabulous – despite the diabetes show.
White Night 2015. Beautiful, magical Melbourne.
Take this quiz to find out if you are an expert in your diabetes!
| 1. How long have you had diabetes? |
|
Long enough. |
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Too long. |
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No idea. I’m drinking to forget. |
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3,456 days; 22 hours; 3 minutes; 14 seconds….15 seconds….16 seconds…. |
| 2. Complete this sentence: Diabetes is like…. |
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A rainbow. All bright colours and a pot of gold at the end. |
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Disneyland. The happiest place on earth! |
| The best thing that has ever happened to me! |
| It sucks. It just plain sucks. |
| 3. A unicorn walks into a diabetes support group meeting. You… |
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Call it Pricker and make it the group’s mascot. |
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Collect tears from it and cure your diabetes. That will work, right? |
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Find out if it knows anyone from the Forbidden Forest in Harry Potter. |
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Check my BGL. |
| 4. Can you eat that? |
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F*ck off |
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No; I hate tripe. |
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Yep; pass me a spoon. |
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Does it have berries in it? Yes? Then I’ll pass. I’d like to remain Hep A free. |
| 5. Water is to sieve as XX is to diabetes? |
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Money |
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Money |
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Money |
|
Money |
| 6. How many people with diabetes does it take to change a light globe? |
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Get over yourself. I use the word ‘diabetic’. |
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I use candlelight. I can’t afford a light globe; my CGM costs are too high. |
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15. Any excuse for a diabetes support group get-together! |
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Not sure. Let me call my endo and I’ll get back to you. |
| 7. You see another PWD in a café. What do you do? |
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Enough with the PWD crap! |
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Squeal, leap across the table, tell that you will be friends forever – whether they like it or not! (Wait…that could just be me….) |
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Nothing, but keep a close eye on them to check out their gear. |
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Make a big deal of pulling out your pump/meter/pens hoping they will notice and start talking to you. |
| 8. Complete this sentence: An insulin pump is…. |
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A little device that delivers insulin. |
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A nightmare to try to accommodate when wearing a tight frock. |
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More demanding that a new puppy – all the beeping & alarms drive me crazy. |
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No idea? What is it? |
| 9. Do you know other people with diabetes |
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No; I avoid them like the plague. |
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Yes. |
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There are other people with diabetes? |
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Yes. I moved house so I could have one as a neighbour. (Wait – that could just be me….) |
| 10. Complete this sentence: Nutella is…. |
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A chocolate, hazelnut spread |
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The work of the devil. (FYI – If you select this, we can never be friends.) |
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The. Greatest. Thing. Ever. |
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The solution to all the world’s problems.
RESULTS Well done – you are an expert in your diabetes. All answers are correct. Or incorrect! Frustrating right? Just like diabetes.
I’ve loved this song for a very, very long time. My favourite version is the cover from Irish band, Solas. Here it is. |
I read this piece by Mike Hoskins (mate, fellow coffee addict, all ‘round good guy) over at Diabetes Mine yesterday where he looked at the use of the word ‘diabetic’. The piece is actually from December last year, but I missed it in the excitement that was New York in December.
I don’t use it. I don’t refer to myself as ‘diabetic’ or ‘a diabetic’. I am a person with diabetes. As far as economy of language goes, it’s a pain, especially when you only have 140 characters to play with. But PWD seems to be pretty widely recognised in my circles.
Perhaps it’s been drummed into me at work, perhaps it’s political correctness gone mad. Regardless, you will not read or hear me use the word diabetic as a label for myself or others with diabetes.
Mike’s article was quite timely as last week I had a little incident that got me more than a little heated.
I was on the phone with VicRoads. This was not an enjoyable experience by any means. I was cut off four times; the four people who answered my call(s) gave me incorrect information and then, when I asked to speak with a medical review case worker, I had someone return my call who was incredibly rude, aggressive and disrespectful. She constantly interrupted me and refused to answer my questions. And gave me the wrong information.
(For context – I was trying to get some clarification as to why I was required to submit an eye exam report along with my medical review.)
‘I was wondering why I am required to submit an eye exam report,’ I explained as the reason for my call.
‘Insulin-dependent diabetics have to must submit a biennial eye exam,’ was the response.
I asked where this is stated in the Guidelines. She would not (could not?) answer this question. She just kept saying (very aggressively) ‘It is a requirement for all insulin-dependent diabetics.’
Now, I am willing to concede that I was pissed off and that if I didn’t have my back up I probably would have let things slide and been happy to continue the discussion about our differing interpretations of the Guidelines.
But I was pissed off. I was annoyed that the medical officer was being rude and patronising and not being helpful. And I was annoyed that she was giving out false information – information that if people didn’t know better could cost a lot of time and (potentially) money for no reason.
So I stopped her.
‘Excuse me,’ I said (and I promise I was being polite and not patronising). ‘Please don’t use the term diabetic. I don’t like it. I would prefer if you used person with diabetes.’
Yes, okay. I know how prissy this sounds. I know how pedantic and, quite frankly, nit-picky I was being. I really do.
But she was being rude and she was spitting out the word as though it was something dirty – that there was something wrong with me.
Without missing a beat, she replied with ‘But you are. You are a diabetic.’ She almost yelled it at me.
The conversation didn’t get any better.
I have diabetes. I own it. I am out, loud and proud about it. But it’s my diabetes and my rules. And my rules include how people speak about me and about my diabetes. They do it with respect, they do it politely and they show courtesy. None of these things were demonstrated. The word ‘diabetic’ was being used here spitefully, and as a label that I felt diminished me.
I don’t care if people with diabetes refer to themselves as (a) diabetic. And I don’t even really mind when other people with diabetes refer to me as (a) diabetic. But it is never done with any judgement. It never pigeon holes someone. And it is never done disrespectfully.
Words matter. I say it all the time and I realise it more and more each day. While it’s a highly personal choice as to the words we each use to describe our ‘diabetes-selves’, using language that is accepted by everyone – and doesn’t have the potential to insult – is clearly a better way.
And here it is. Again. The Diabetes Australia Language Position Statement. And yes, I sent a copy of this to VicRoads as soon as I got off the phone.
I was sitting on the bed in my underwear, a towel wrapped around my wet hair, doing a full set change on my pump.
Mornings are a little hectic around our place. I am a pretty organised person but despite best laid plans, mornings still have the potential to head into a disordered mess. I blame the dogs – especially the puppy – who in their cute four-legged way have the potential to derail the morning routine.
But today, everyone was calm and just getting on with the job of getting themselves sorted and out of the house at the right time. Even Sooty was minding her own business, quietly chewing on a pair of Aaron’s socks in a corner.
The kidlet climbed onto the bed next to me to speak about something that was happening at school that day, talking a million miles an hour and brushing her hair at the same time. Excellent multi-skilling!
Without missing a beat in her commentary (or grooming), she watched me draw insulin into a new cartridge, flick the outside of the syringe with my finger and push a few tiny air bubbles out, a little spray of insulin heading into the air. I inhaled, thinking what I always do when I smell insulin, ‘The smell that keeps you alive’.
I connected a new line, loaded the cartridge into my pump, tightened the cap and primed. A couple of drops of insulin fell onto my bare legs.
And then, I peeled away the tape, pulled off the blue cap and pushed the cannula into my skin, quickly pulling out the introducer needle.
At that point the kidlet stopped speaking to me about school, her hairbrush poised mid-air.
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘How can you do that and say it doesn’t hurt?’
‘It doesn’t,’ I said simply. ‘At least, not much. And that one really didn’t hurt.’
I feel that diabetes has desensitised me to so much. I have become more accepting of my own mortality and, even though I don’t like to think about it, I am resigned to a shortened life span. As I age, I expect limiting complications. I accept pain more readily. I know that my health cannot be taken for granted and that my immune system has the potential, at any given moment, to do something stupid. There are days that I feel an exhaustion that I am sure is connected to diabetes, but deal with it by simply getting on with things. I wear robot parts on my body and no longer even bat an eyelid when I catch a glimpse of them taped to my skin.
And I don’t feel the pain of needles anymore.
I looked at our beautiful daughter. ‘You would be surprised at what your body and mind are capable of, darling,’ I told her. ‘These things keep me healthy. I’ll do pretty much anything for that.’
She hopped off the bed and headed into the kitchen for her breakfast. I threw on my clothes for the day, gathered up the rubbish – the used pump line and cartridge, and packaging from the new ones – and followed her into the kitchen.
The smell of insulin lingered in the room.
Diabetogenic 