My mother — whom I love dearly and who made a delicious Thanksgiving dinner today — read about a billion pages of this here weblog last night. That’s great! She’s more-or-less the person I have in mind when I write about diabetes for people who don’t have it.
Imagine my surprise, when this morning over breakfast she said, “You’re really struggling with your diabetes, huh?” I have had my struggles and frustrations with diabetes recently, but I don’t feel like I “struggle” with it.
I asked Lisa about this. “Well, you have had a lot of frustrations with it recently. And you’ve been writing about them.”
It seems like all of this writing about diabetes and my process of trying to get my blood sugar to do what I want may be giving you, my dear non-PWD readers, the wrong impression. While I get frustrated when I do something and it doesn’t work, resulting in high or low blood glucose readings, I don’t feel like I’m struggling. I try to be pragmatic and learn something from the experience so that it doesn’t happen the same way next time. And although I’ve been known to wonder whether I’m ever going to be done with these teachable moments, I’m trying to maintain my charming stoicism and faith that there are solutions to my pancreas/paperweight-related issues.
Lisa is undoubtedly correct that it may seem like I’m struggling with diabetes more these days mainly because I’m writing about it more. In that case, perhaps I’ve missed the mark a bit. I was hoping (a) to humanize my illness a bit, to show that diabetes self-management is not mired in old one-size-fits-all rules, to get across the fact that people with diabetes can have as normal lives as anyone else and (b) to present useful information for other people with diabetes, to add to the repository of what works and what doesn’t, to teach what I know and what I’ve learned through experience and second-hand.
With all that said, I did want to share more successes with you than I have been able to present. I was kind of expecting that by this point in November I would be able to tell you that I have all of my basal rates and bolus ratios and sensitivity factors sorted out. And in particular, I was really hoping that I could show y’all what I do with exercise that leaves my blood sugar where I want it. But, while I’m making progress, it’s coming quite slowly. (Although, I feel happy to share that the last couple of times that I’ve gone for a run in the morning, my readings have stayed almost exactly unchanged. More about that later.)
So as I finish up this Thanksgiving dispatch, I want to say that I’m thankful for my Mom and all of her love, friendship, and maternal concern. And I’m thankful for Lisa, the best wife and friend I could ever hope for, who decided to love me even more after I was diagnosed with diabetes and who has helped me through the actual struggles and frustrations with it. I’m thankful for all of my friends and coworkers who enrich my life and treat me like just another person and yet have shown remarkable interest in my illness. And I’m thankful for you, my readers; without you these would just be self-indulgent ramblings.
See y’all here again tomorrow.
