A day in my life ...

... with type 1 diabetes.

(I know - *groan* - another diabetes post - boring!)

It's World Diabetes Day, so I thought I'd blog about my dealing with diabetes in my own warped way.

1) Calling the kettle black - It's known in my clinic that I have type 1 DM and that I wear an insulin pump. However, for a bunch of medical professionals (nurses, mostly) their undestanding of the disease is lacking. This morning, someone brought in a cake for someone else's birthday. My sugar was about 120, so I took a small piece and was setting my bolus, when I heard, " Hey, you have diabetes, you shouldn't eat that."

I looked up to see the 300 pound, 5 foot tall rooming nurse from the other care unit shoveling a piece of cake the size of my head into her piehole. As she's admonishing me for my sliver of carbs, the crumbs are falling out of her mouth and a visible sweat is starting to bead on her forehead. I just stared at her as she joked about doctors not being the healthiest eaters, etc.

I was going to challenge her to a foot race around the clinic at lunch, but I think her heart would actually explode if she tried to exert herself - so I held my tongue and offered to cut her another piece of cake.

I know I'm mean and cruel, but maybe this will change your mind - last week, I overheard her telling another nurse that she's trying to pack on another 20 to 30 pounds (exacbating her asthma, hypertension and arthritis), so that her insurance will cover her bariatric surgery completely as a medical necessity and not charge her for an elective procedure!


2) You don't look that sick - The little old lady (who take 10 medications a day for her heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease and breast cancer) is looking at me pitifully after I tell her I'm checking my blood sugar because I have diabetes. She shakes her head, mumbles "that's too bad" and shuffles off toward the pharmacy with her walker (complete with cut tennis balls on the foot pads) stopping to occasionally untangle her portable oxygen hose. Really?


3) I could never have that thing hooked up to me - Every now and then my insulin pump falls off my belt loop and dangles from my side. Or my pumps beeps or vibrates as my blood sugar goes too high or too low. Often people think it's my beeper, but as that technology is getting assimilated by cell phones these days, more and more people ask me what that "thing" is with the tubing. I tell them it's an insulin pump - and the reaction I get is either a) blank stare (no idea what I'm talking about) b) big grin (dude ... you're like a cyborg) or c) revulsion.

I'm always amazed by reaction "c". It's not okay to make fun of the retarded kid or the woman in a wheelchair(I'm NOT saying that's ok, by the way), but it seems to be "okay" to verbalize the disgust of "having to wear that thing". I used to glibly joke that this thing is keeping me alive (in order to make the jerk feel bad), but now I smile and remark, "well, I hope you never have to". Then, in my mind, I put a jinx on them that they pee their pants when they walk away but that never happens - sigh.


So while all the above has not happened to me today in particular, they occur frequently enough that it feels like it happens every day.

I used to get pissed off, but now that I'm doing pretty good with the condition 14 years later, I find solace in a excellent A1c, the fact that I'm healthier than 96% of the people I know and that my family loves me for who I am - occasional crankiness to the insensitive people in the world and all.

Happy WDD!