"My Diabetes"

Serena R Pruess
August 31, 2016
CoonCat Creations
aikacooncat.blogspot.com

I woke up last night, like I do many nights, in a sweat and panic. I got out of bed and went into the other room, stumbling along looking for my test kit. I checked my blood sugar and sure enough, it was 55, low, again.

I used the rest of my energy to get to the kitchen, looking for something that had enough sugar in it to bring me up. I drank 1 cup of pineapple juice and ate 3 fruit rollups, and one chocolate chip cookie. I release after I eat the last fruit rollup, that I might have eaten to many carbs. Too late now. I go back to bed still feeling weak, dizzy, and in a haze. I just want to sleep.

That was at 3am.

I woke up this morning to check my blood sugar, it is 238. To high, but not as high as I expected after eating 67 carbs just to treat my low. Oh well. I eat my cereal for breakfast and take my insulin though my pump to correct the high and for my cereal. Everyday it’s like this. Food is just carbs.

A couple days ago I had to change my pump site early, once again, because getting out of my car had pulled out my pump site and I couldn’t get insulin. This was the second time in a row this happened so I broke down and started to cry. I’ve had diabetes for 20 years now. Sometimes I need to cry about it. My boyfriend tells me everything is fine, don’t cry, that’s enough. “No, you don’t understand!!” I scream. Partly because it was hurtful to hear, partly because it’s never enough. I will have this all my life. Nothing will cure me. I suffer every day, hanging between life, and death. But nobody understands.

People make jokes, a friend posts a picture of them eating a chocolate cake and in the comments about said cake, they write “This is going to give me Diabeetes.” Another friend comments, “lol” and someone else writes, “thanks for the laugh!” – They don’t understand. It’s not funny, it’s hurtful to be the one disease in the world that it is OK to make fun of. The only illness out there people use as a punchline to obese jokes. I start to write back on the post, “That’s not how you get type 1 diabetes, it’s an immune disease. It has nothing to do with cak-“ I stop. I delete the message. What’s the point? Having this conversation over and over again with people. But it never ends.

I sit here in silence, hurting, but nobody cares. They see diabetes only when I poke my finger to check my blood sugar, when I take insulin for that slice of pizza I ate. Then it goes back to being invisible. But not for me. I am diabetic when I woke up, go to bed, brush my teeth, change my clothes. It is the one thing on my mind every minute of the day. But they don’t see it. Just there for a laugh while I am fighting to survive another day.