Seized
I don’t exactly know what it feels like to have a seizure. It’s something that I only feel the residual effects of. I was a sophomore in college the first time I had a seizure. I can remember my first seizure well, I was a sophomore in college, it was spring 2002. It was the middle of the night (as it always is when I have seizures), apparently I was moaning like a wounded animal (so my parents say, I wasn’t exactly aware of what was going on so we’ll just have to stick with what my parents have told me). I woke up my sister who is in the room next to me. She was heading out of her room as Dad was running out of his room into mine. I had fallen out of my bed and I was flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water.
This was all new territory for them. This had never happened before, in fact, I don’t think we had ever been told about what to do if I had a seizure. This being my first seizure, Dad held me down while mom in a panic checked my blood. I was low, somewhere in 40s (as would later become a pattern). Having never dealt with a seizure induced by a low blood sugar and being in a complete panic, my parents completely forgot about the glucagon shots that we had (and had never had to use in my 10 years of being a diabetic).
They tried with all their might to get juice into me (because being a responsible diabetic (read: sarcasm) there were no other “treat this low quick” supplies in the house.) They fought with me for quite some time as I was still writhering on the floor and Dad was holding me down and trying to get my clinched jaw open so that mom could get the juice into me.
I vaguely remember Dad putting me back into bed. Mom trying to force me to eat peanut butter crackers and before they left, them telling me that I needed to check my blood and me sticking my finger out to be pricked.
What I do clearly remember is the next morning. I woke up intent on going to school because I had to give a speech in my public speaking class. The problem was, I could barely speak because my jaw felt like it had been clamped together in vice grips all night long and that I had been fighting them to get my mouth open. Every muscle in my body ached and I had a headache that was a force that wasn’t to be reckoned with.
Mom explained to me what had happened (because I was clueless other than the pain I was feeling) as I ran around in a panic because not only did I have a speech to give, with a mouth that could barely move, I had to shower (which I had already done the night before in preparation for the speech in an attempt to prevent this type of panic). I had to shower because in the midst of my seizure I broke out into a severe cold sweat that had caused my head to be soaked and the next morning there was just no making it look better without a shower.
To add to my panic, Mom didn’t want me going to school. The prior night had been a near death experience and I needed to stay home and recuperate (and go to the doctor for that matter). Why I decided to fight her on staying home is beyond me (what college student wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to stay home?) I went to school and gave my speech and it turned out to be fairly pathetic, I would’ve done better off staying at home, but that’s besides the point.
How we found out that I had a seizure I don’t know, and how my parents found out that I needed a glucagon shot I don’t know that either. I’ll attribute it all to a phone call to the doctor that I clearly don’t remember. Whatever it was that told my parents how to respond to my to my sick animal moaning flopping on the ground like a fish out of water incidents. It was going to help in the years to come.
The Art of Drinking and Diabetes
I’m probably far from qualified to be talking about this given my history with both diabetes and drinking and what happens when I combined them. But I feel like writing about it, if for no other reason than I can say what shouldn’t be done, at a minimum for me, because realistically, how each of our diabetes is and how our systems handle alcohol is different for each of us.
My history with diabetes began 15 years ago. My history with alcohol begins 10 years ago. The relationship between diabetes and alcohol developed 6 years ago and boy was it rough, they eventually had to break up 2 years ago, but then they had a passing of each other 3 weeks ago and a run in with each other 4 days ago. It was the run in that got me thinking about this whole drinking and diabetes thing. Because it was the break up 2 years ago that stopped the whole drinking with diabetes thing. And there was the whole drinking and diabetes thing that almost killed me 4 years ago. It’s no understatement when I say that drinking and diabetes and me have a history.
Where do I even begin? We can ignore the drinking in high school at the friends house where we’d go after field trips because quite frankly that doesn’t count as drinking because they wouldn’t let me have more than a sip because they were afraid of the effects it would have on my diabetes which brings us to 6 years ago when people didn’t care too much about the diabetes, me or the friends.
I was 19. I was rebelling (that’s the story of my life but it’s also a story for another day). I hated my diabetes and wanted it to go away. So, I escaped it, I started drinking, but it wasn’t like a beer here or a glass of wine there, no, it became a game, me and my friends, who could consume the most alcohol and still be standing. I remember one time I had totally drank the guys under the table, one was lying on the floor, I kicked him and told him to get up because I wasn’t done drinking yet.
As far as I was concerned, I could drink hard liquor to my hearts content. I had reasoned it out. You see, the hard liquor was on the free foods list for us diabetics. No insulin necessary. Seagrams 7, free food. Bacardi, free food. Rum, free food. Vodka, free food. And vodka is among my favorites.
But there was a catch, alcohol made my blood sugars go low. So, to counter act those free foods, I had to mix my drinks with something not so free. Vodka with orange juice, i.e. screw driver. Vodka with red bull. Seagrams with 7-up. Bacardi and coke. Rum and coke. The effects of this on me, probably perfect, I don’t know though, because my diabetes was in no kind of care. So whether or not my blood sugars would’ve been normal was beyond me because they were always high, because I wasn’t taking care of my diabetes, I was neglecting it (remember, I didn’t want it anymore).
Beer, beer was a beauty of it’s own, alcohol, but liquid carbs, so for all the years I drank it, I wasn’t too concerned. I wasn’t going to go low because of the carbs and I sure as hell wasn’t going to go high because of the alcohol. I later learned, during a period when I was checking my blood and I was taking care of my diabetes, and my blood sugars were in normal range that this theory only held true if it was a lite beer, bud light, miller lite, michelob light, etc. And the truth was, I didn’t like the light beers. I think the only one I tolerated was miller lite. There was another time with beer, in which I was, once again, when I was checking my blood and I was taking care of my diabetes, and my blood sugars were in normal range, that I handled it nicely. It was normal beer, not a light beer, and with each can, that seemed to be every hour, I would check my blood and take insulin for the carbs, but I was only taking 3/4 of the amount that I needed and that seemed to have worked well.
Now wine, wine is a beast in it’s own right, one that I don’t understand at all and one that I also don’t get along with. Wine is the one alcohol that I can say I truly got drunk off of. Wine is the one alcohol that caused me to get into a fight and a chair got broken and I remember nothing, except for the pain in my ribs and the hangover that I had the next morning. I take it back, there’s one more thing I remember, or two actually, it was boxed wine, and my friend did check my blood and give me a shot before I completely passed out. That was the only time that someone has ever made sure my blood sugar was ok when I was drunk. That was a really good friend. My heart warms just thinking about her. To this day, I can’t stand the smell of wine.
So, diabetes and I, we had some good times and some bad times when it came to alcohol. The worst time was when I was 22. Diabetes and I were in a war. One night, in the middle of the week, I went to a club with a friend (and this never happens). I had a beer and a liquid marijuana. 2 drinks, I never drank that little when I went out, usually, I was getting kicked out as the bar/club was closing and I was lucky if I could see straight enough to walk to my car, and driving, well, we’ll just thank the good Lord above that I never crashed into anything or anyone. When I left the club on this night, I was very sober and feeling fine. The next morning, I wasn’t so fine. The next morning, I was in a state of severe diabetic ketoacidosis. It probably had nothing to do with the alcohol I had been drinking and a lot to do with the fact that I hadn’t barely taken any insulin in the year leading up to this event. Actually, that’s not true, in the year I hadn’t taken insulin, I had been drinking heavily, I kindof in a way got what was coming to me: a 3 day trip to ICU with the doctors wondering what I had done to myself and telling my mom that they didn’t know if they were going to be able to bring me out of whatever it was that I had put myself into.
Yes, done in an irresponsible manner, diabetes and drinking can be deadly…but then again, done in an irresponsible manner, drinking can be deadly all by itself, the diabetes just kind of seems to magnify that danger. That was echoed to me on a recent trip to Vegas, where it was a battle of whether or not I could drink. I lost that battle, because I had friends that didn’t want to spend the night with me in the hospital. Now, at the time of this trip to Vegas, I hadn’t drank in 2 years. I hadn’t drank because mainly, I hated the way I couldn’t drink freely and had to watch what I was drinking and how much I was drinking due to my diabetes (which in retrospect, if you think about it, is what every person needs to be doing, but I digress). I also knew, that if I started drinking again, that there would be no control, it’d go back to it being a game, because that’s what always happened, it had been seen in my past. I had gone once 6 months without drinking and when I started up again it was a game, who could drink the most and still be standing. So Vegas just left me with the ache to drink. I wanted a drink and bad. I wanted a corona beer or a vodka and red bull (my favorites) but it wasn’t happening. I got a few sips. But it wasn’t enough.
Then we fast forward to this week, when I decided I needed a beer because I was frustrated at work and there was a bar down on the golf course and it was a 10 minute walk from work. This beer was a test. I was only going to have one beer. My diabetes was under control, and had been mostly so for the past 9 months. It was just one drink, I could do this, I was going to sit and enjoy it, I wasn’t going to slam it down and ask for the next one. I checked my blood before we went on our walk, I drank my beer, we walked back to work and I kept a close eye on my blood sugars. I never did find out how many carbs were in my Corona, and I didn’t take a shot for it because of not knowing the carb content, and my blood sugar did end up going low.
There’s an art to drinking and diabetes and I may never know exactly how to paint that picture exactly as it is because things are always changing, but the other day, I proved, I can drink, I need to have control when I drink, but I can drink and I can do it without destroying my life. I really don’t have to fear my diabetes while drinking as long as I drink in moderation. That there, moderation, is the trick, but with diabetes, when is moderation not the trick?
Flawed Marriage, Doomed From the Start
Diabetes and I have had it rough since day one. In fact, it can kind of be thought of like a pre-arranged marriage. One in which diabetes was deeply in love with me and me not so much with it. In fact, had there been a cure in any one of the 50 states, I would’ve gone and gotten a divorce as soon as I found out we were married. *drums: ba da bop*
Diabetes marriage to me wasn’t like that of Salvatore’s in “The Wedding Planner”. You know, the one where he had to marry Mary’s mom due to a pre-arrangement and he was in love with some other woman and yet he grew to love the one he had married, and his love began when he was lying in bed deathly ill and she sat there by him he began to appreciate her.
I appreciated her.
Then the appreciation grew to respect.
Respect grew to like.
Then like grew to love.
A deeper love than I could ever hope for.
We’ve heard the deathly ill story before, what diabetic hasn’t. But as diabetes sat there by my side gripping my pancreas, there was no appreciation for that. There definitely has been no respect for diabetes either, he’s not respected, his territory isn’t respected, what he’s done isn’t respect, yup, definitely not any respect. And where’s there’s no respect how can there ever be like, and where there’s no like, there can’t be love. I can say however there’s a deeper hate than most people will ever feel in their life.
Diabetes and I would’ve slept in different rooms had it been possible. If I had to live with it, there was no reason that I should have to sleep with. He’s been put in the dog house while I enjoy the every day pleasures of normal life, except for the fact that like any couple that’s having marital problems the problem always returns. I’ll have the bed all to myself and the next thing I know diabetes is back in it with me and I’m having a hypoglycemic seizure. I’ll be out with friends and out of the blue diabetes appears and I have to take a moment to fight with it. I’ll be making a meal, something diabetes doesn’t like, but it doesn’t matter because diabetes isn’t around, and oh damn, diabetes appears, ready for dinner as though I should’ve been making it to include him all along.
Kind of funny if you think about it, diabetes and I are the married couple that is have marital problems and counseling isn’t working. Yes, we’ve been to counseling, I think we did what most couples do when they go to counseling (from what I’ve seen in the movies of course) we’ve denied our problems (we being me, because diabetes tells you that there’s no problem at all, oh wait, that is denial isn’t it…yes, we’ve denied our problems, both of us). We’re not even exactly sure how long we’ve been together, I vaguely remember getting it sometime before the 4th of July in 1992, but that could’ve been June or July. I pull random dates out of my head and diabetes doesn’t argue, June 11, 1992. But then again, if you were with me, you wouldn’t argue either, as a Courtney is always right.
This is the perfect place for a clip from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I think that movie in a way does an excellent job of displaying me and diabetes, this is what Mrs. Smith had to say in one instance and in the case of me and diabetes, it would be diabetes speaking:
There’s this huge space between us. And it just keeps filling up with everything that we don’t say to each other.
Yes, diabetes and I have this huge space between us and it’s because I don’t talk about it, but we’re improving, I’ve been pouring out all my feelings, ok, maybe not all of them, out on my blog, and diabetes can always read my blog, I don’t have to tell him directly what’s going on, right? Diabetes speaks to me all the time, hey guess what you’re going to go blind this morning your blood sugar is low. Hey how about vomiting some green acid from the bottom of your stomach you’re going into diabetic ketoacidosis. You, how about some extra bit of emotions today, because you haven’t had enough, oh am I sending mixed messages, yes, you could be low or you could be high. Yes, diabetes talks to me. But he’s fairly cruel when he does so I don’t feel so bad about not talking to him.
We’ve tried the temporary separation thing, or rather, I’ve tried the temporary separation thing with diabetes, and I say temporary because it just won’t stay gone for long. And really, that’s me in denial because it’s never really gone, but let me be in denial for the purposes of this piece. The truth is, diabetes is like the kid that’s screaming “mommy don’t leave me” as you’ve dropped them off at daycare for the day so that you can go to work and afford to have the little brat (I don’t really feel like that towards kids, but roll with me here, as I am on a roll, that and I do feel that way about diabetes). They’re hanging onto your leg and in the event that someone actually is successful in tearing them off of you, you are so fortunate as to return to them in the evening.
I try extra hard to separate myself from diabetes, in fact, in a conversation a couple weeks ago there was an amusing bit about my separation from diabetes. It was all because of my handle on Twitter, it was RideToRemedy because I was going to twitter my blood sugars and diabetes crap, but then because life is as it is, life got twittered and this conversation happened:
Friend: What’s with your handle?
Me: It was for my diabetes
Friend: And?
Me: And I was going to twitter it and keep it separate from my real life but it didn’t work out so well
Friend: And what, diabetes is in your fake life?
No, in my fake life, I have prince charming, and I enjoy being around prince charming and I love prince charming. Diabetes is in my real life, thanks for reminding me. Yeah, I try to separate my life from diabetes. It doesn’t work out to well for either of us.
In fact, I’ve gone as far as trying to kill diabetes, but diabetes bites back and it has tried to kill me. Now, it’s about as much of a crime for me to kill diabetes as it is a crime for diabetes to kill me which I’m sure in any of the 50 states isn’t a crime at all so much as it is a sad medical death. Well for me it would be a sad medical death, for diabetes, it would be…a miracle, it would be a miracle if death came to diabetes. I know, I’m such an evil wife to diabetes, but can you really blame me, at all, for any of it?
No, You Don’t Understand
99.9% of the time when people tell me they understand in reference to my diabetes, I want to strangle them. Because 99.9% of the time when people tell me they understand in reference to my diabetes, they don’t. People don’t understand diabetes if they don’t have diabetes. They just can’t understand it, because they don’t know what it takes, they don’t understand that it’s a 24/7 job for the rest of my life, they just don’t understand. They may think they understand, but they don’t.
Most of the time, when people are telling my they understand, my blood sugar is low and I’m in an argument about the evils of diabetes and how’s it ruined my life. And some idiot will spurt out “I understand” which if they’re unlucky, which half the time they are, they get told about how they don’t understand. And then 90% of the time I get told about how people understand because they’ve lived with it all their lives. What they really mean is that they’ve lived with someone who has lived with diabetes all their life, because it would be wrong of them to say that they had in reality lived with diabetes all their lives. And just because they had lived with someone that has had diabetes doesn’t put them into a position of understanding. It would be nai impossible for someone not having diabetes to fully understand diabetes. (Of course, they don’t think so.)
So, what is it they think they understand, when are those words most heard: holidays, just around dessert time when blood sugars are running high and we can’t eat the sugary goodness that’s being served up, in my case pumpkin pie on thanksgiving and tradition (this strawberry jello with whipped cream goodness that has a cookie crumb topping that probably has a real name but I don’t know what it is because for as long as I can remember I’ve been calling it tradition because it used to get made every Christmas, right up until I got diabetes and then all the sudden it stopped getting made because if it was made in a sugar free fashion it didn’t turn out.) on Christmas. When I decline dessert, because I’m a responsible diabetic, or I don’t come out for dessert and some nincompoop comes to inquire as to why and I tell them, and the response I get is “it’s ok, I understand, you can have some later” I just want to scream “NO! You don’t understand, if you’re not eating dessert it’s because you’ll have to unbutton your pants because you ate too much not because eating dessert will push you into a diabetic coma. And no, I can’t have some later because all you gluttons will have eaten it, there will be no dessert for later.” No, they don’t understand.
The last few years at birthday time I’ve gone without a cake “because you can’t eat it anyways”. Ummmm, I’m glad you think you know what’s good for me. Somewhere in the fit I’m throwing because I’d really like a cake, I’ll hear the “it’s ok courtney, I understand” oh we’re back to that again, no, you don’t understand. The birthday cake one is interesting, because it’s my mom that “understands” my mom whose lived with diabetes all her life because her 2 uncles had it, her grandmother had it and I have it. I’m trying to understand why she doesn’t get the fact that in moderation, I can eat birthday cake. I’m trying to understand why she can’t get past the fact that “sugar is bad for me”. I so badly want to strangle her when she understands. I stand there and yell at her as though it will make her understand, but it doesn’t.
Here’s what people need to understand, in my opinion of course:
1) Just because I have diabetes doesn’t mean I can’t eat sugar, we do this thing these days called counting carbs and then I take insulin based off the number of carbs I ate. Often times, the sugar free stuff has just as many carbs as the sugar-full stuff. I can eat the sugar-full stuff, it just has to be done in moderation, which, by the way, I do pretty damn well. Let me give you an example: Imagine a meal at a friends house, you’re one of about 10 people. You portion out the main and side dishes like normal and you happily eat. Dessert gets brought out later in the even, as it’s being dished up, you decline, but not quite fully decline, you ask the bestest of your friends among that group if you could just have a bite of their piece of dessert. Problem solved, the edge has been taken off my craving for the decadent dessert that was brought and yet I don’t push myself into a diabetic coma because I ate an entire piece. That’s the first thing people need to understand, I can eat sugar.
2) People need to understand that it’s not easy to decline dessert, even if I just ask for a bite and do get to taste it, it’s not easy. It’s very hard actually. Because deep down inside, I would love to be able to sit there and enjoy the dessert to the same degree that everyone else is enjoying dessert. I’m just practicing a very deep level of self-control and it’s not easy and yes, it hurts.
3) When my blood sugar is low, people need to understand that the best thing that they can do for me, is leave me be after I’m sucking down juice or eating something. The worse thing to they can do is sit there and talk to me, especially if it’s about how they understand how I’m feeling because they’re hypoglycemic. Because I have to wonder, do they really understand or are they just saying that to make me feel better. Do they understand that I can’t think straight and that half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying. Do they understand that if they say the wrong words they’re going to have a war on their hands and that I’ll probably have no clue what it was I was fighting over when my blood sugar returns to normal. I can think of exactly one person that truly understands what a diabetics low blood sugars are like. And the only reason I even venture to say that she truly understands is because when her daughter got diabetes she told the doctors she wanted to know what they felt like and the doctors injected her with a short acting insulin and her blood sugar went low. She’s about the only non-diabetic person that I’ll except the words “i understand” from when my blood sugar is low.
4) low blood sugars and adversely high blood sugars make me exhausted. I usually need a couple hour nap after experiencing a low or high blood sugar. A nap will fix my poor demeanor, it will also help me make it through the rest of the day much better than if I don’t have a nap. It’s funny for people to tell me that they understand when I’m like, I just need to go lie down, I need a short nap “It’s ok dear, I understand, we all get a little tired in the afternoon sometimes” Ummm, yeah, me getting tired isn’t a result of my age like yours is, thanks for understanding.
5) just because I’m doing well doesn’t mean it’s easy. Please people understand that. This isn’t an easy job living with diabetes, there’s so much that I have to do, and to be quite honest, I’m not a fan of doing any of it. This isn’t a get up in the morning and take your pills illness and be sure to take them before you go to bed illness, this is a 24/7 disease I have.
6) Just because you don’t see me taking care of it, doesn’t mean that I’m not. I had a grandmother that I hadn’t seen in 14 years come to visit me a couple months back. It really pissed me off when she would say things like “are you ok, are you doing ok, I haven’t seen you check your blood in a while” My diabetes is a covert operation, I don’t like to draw attention to it (unless I’m dying) I take care of it, you’ll very rarely see me check my blood or take a shot because I don’t like all that comes from people seeing me doing so, the questions and crap. Call me a closet diabetic if you will, but I’m taking care of it, and you don’t have to ask questions. It irritates me when people say “i haven’t seen you check your blood in a while”. I know when I have to check my blood and you don’t have to be on top of it. I’ve got it all under control. And the world isn’t going to fall apart if I’m with you for 4 hours and in those 4 hours I don’t check my blood. I’m allowed to not be public with my diabetes. It’s all good. I need you to understand that. I’m not the 13 year old that got pissed off and stopped taking care of my diabetes because everyone was micro managing me anymore.
These are the things people need to understand. Because right now, most of you don’t understand. And instead of me being pissed off, I’m going to help you understand. So please, make sure you understand the 6 items above. And if more issues of understanding arise, I’ll be happy to let you know what it is you need to understand. It will make both our lives easier.
When Will It Stop Being An Excuse
I went and saw August Rush tonight and to say the least, it struck a chord. It made me very emotional, made me cry, and it drudged up the past. At the root of that past, my diabetes.
I guess I need to give you some history:
7th grade, I decided I wanted to be in the orchestra, I don’t remember why. I wanted to play the viola, I didn’t want to play the violin because the violin is known, the cello, known, the bass, known, but the viola, it’s like the…hrm…I can’t find a good metaphor, but when I was in 7th grade, I thoroughly thought that it wasn’t known, and the truth is, most people don’t know the difference between a viola and a violin. That was me in 7th grade.
I played viola for exactly 2 years, 7th grade and 8th grade. In the 8th grade, I decided that I wanted to be in the Albuquerque Youth Orchestra (AYO), I had my piece all picked out for tryouts, it was devil something, I don’t remember anymore. But I got deterred.
I had actually been deterred for 2 years, both years I was in orchestra, the determent started the spring of 7th grade, the band and orchestra students would go up to Glorieta for a weekend and learn and play. I didn’t get to go, the reason, my diabetes. I hated mom for it, my diabetes was holding me back. It was the same deal in 8th grade.
When I told mom I wanted to be in the AYO she was cool with it, fine go ahead, you can try out. Then I found out that I had to be active in orchestra in high school. That wasn’t in the agenda. Mom didn’t want to take me to zero hour (the hour before school started for practice, for me approx 6:30 am) Zero hour was mandatory for band/orchestra students, but that wasn’t even the biggest problem, I could’ve found a ride to school that early in the morning, no, my problem was that high school orchestra existed for one purpose, competitions. I couldn’t be in the orchestra if I couldn’t to on competitions, and I couldn’t go to competitions because of my diabetes.
My heart was broken, I was destined to be something great, I know I was. In the eighth grade when we had to write a song, I refused to write one because we were going to have to sing it, so instead, I composed a piece and recorded it. It didn’t go platinum but it was gold (yes our music was ranked).
In college, I was all for minoring in music, and that would’ve been all good except that I had to play an instrument, so after 2 classical music classes and 1 jazz class and 1 day in music theory, then I got told, you can’t minor in music if you don’t play an instrument so I don’t know why you want to sit in music theory. Nice thanks, I didn’t even explain. I dropped the class.
Diabetes was an excuse I think that my parents used, an excuse for why I couldn’t do things. So I sit here wondering, when will my diabetes stop being an excuse, when will I start fighting back for the things I want to do. Even now at age 26, after 15 years of having diabetes, I still hear, “you can’t do that”…”you’re stupid if you do that”…WHY…TELL ME WHY I’M SO DAMN LIMITED BY DIABETES??? I shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t have been an issue, I should’ve fought and I didn’t, and I realize that I can’t change the past, but I can steer the future, and God help me, if I let them tell me no anymore because of my diabetes. God help me if I spurt out one more time, “I can’t because of my diabetes” It’s been ingrained in my head, and there are things I fear and I shouldn’t and it’s because “you can’t”. I’m going to change that, I’m going to fight for my right to live a normal right, because you know what, I CAN!
I am Blessed
If you ask on a good day, I’m blessed. But it has to be a really really really good day. And they’re few and far between, but if you do manage to catch me on one of those good days, I will tell you that I am blessed to have diabetes. (Any other day and I’ll be happy to tell you about how much I really hate it or how I just deal with it because I have to) I realize that this is in direct conflict with last night’s post about how I wish it had killed me, but that’s the difference between dying happy at age 11 or dying disgruntled with a stupid disease at age 26. But that’s also not what this piece is about. This is about how I’m blessed, on the rare days that I’ll agree I am.
I’ll start with how I’m blessed to be alive (even if it is because I have diabetes). The thing about me is, I live dangerously close to the edge of life, it’s been that way since I was very little, when I dive into something I dive head first, when I decide I’m doing something (good or bad) I do it or don’t do it (bad or good). That really hasn’t changed since I got diabetes, but my family fully believes that if I hadn’t gotten diabetes, I probably wouldn’t have seen my twentieth year of life. And sometimes I’ll agree with them. I had no fears then, and I really have no fears now, unless you take into consideration my fear of dying before I’ve lived out my whole life (there’s so much I want to do, and I realize I won’t get to do all of it, thank you diabetes, but there’s a lot I can do and I want to do, and when I’m not bitching and moaning about how I hate my diabetes, I’m out there getting stuff done.) The only other fear I’ve had of late is when I was sitting on the airplane Friday getting ready to take of for Phoenix, my one stop on my way to Vegas. I was gripping the armrests, my heart was beating quickly and I was sweating, I was scared. And I’m not usually scared of flying, it’s just that, the last 5 times I was on a plane, I had a parachute strapped to my back, this time I didn’t and that scared me. But as you can see, I’m usually not scared. I’ve made 5 skydiving trips. I’ve fallen down a waterfall (which I believe to be a 30 ft waterfall, lived to tell about it, and am still not afraid that I might be standing too close to the edge). I could go on forever about the crazy stuff I’ve done, jumping off an edge of a wall while on my bike that was wall at least 6 ft tall. I don’t fear. I don’t fear anything.
Diabetes was probably what was responsible for slowing me down and helping me make it to my 26th year of life. Which is ironic if you know of the stuff I’ve pulled since I became a diabetic. (Of course, this is where my parents would say “God’s got a plan for you and he’s not ready to take you home”. While I am (on the best of days) grateful that I’m alive, I wish that if He felt it so important for me to be alive that He had let me live without diabetes, God, if you’re reading this, I’m waiting for a cure, we’re waiting for a cure, all 246+ million of us. We’d like to live without diabetes. But I digress.) Being that I didn’t manage to kill myself doing some dangerous stunt during my teenage years, I’m blessed to have diabetes. Thank you diabetes for slowing me down.
On a good day, a good day in which you manage to hear me say “I am blessed to have diabetes”, I’ll tell you that I’m blessed because I among the things I was told I couldn’t do, ahm, skydiving, I’ve gone skydiving. Not only have I gone skydiving, but I’ve gone skydiving 5 times. Furthermore, before I decided that I had to prematurely retire from my skydiving career, I got to pack my own parachute and fly it. I am blessed, that even though I may have never been able to be a paratrooper in the armed forces (my second choice to being a fighter jet pilot), I have gotten to jump from a plane. On a bad day, I’m pissed that I felt the need to retire, on a good day, I’m grateful that I did get to make the jumps I did.
On a good day, a really good day, a day when my blood sugars are neither low nor high and I can actually ride my bike, I’m blessed. I’m blessed that I still have both my legs (amputation was always a threat, a threat that started at the bottom of my feet with a cut that wouldn’t heal that would lead to gangrene and I wouldn’t respond to the fact that I had gangrene and it would go up my leg and I’d have to have it amputated. Yes, they’d [my family/friends] threaten me with horrible things to get me to take care of myself, it didn’t always work, but once again, I digress). I’m blessed that now, after 15 years of diabetes, I’ve found a sport I can participate in, that I love, and furthermore, allows me to fight back. Up until this year, I never really thought about doing anything to find a cure, I just complained about having diabetes and the cure we don’t have. When I was told about riding for diabetes instead of just walking, my interest was peaked, cycling is a sport, walking not so much. I got on board with cycling as soon as I could and I tell you what, I enjoy every moment of it. Riding down the road at 20 mph, speeding down a hill at over 30 mph. Those are the times that I feel blessed, despite my diabetes.
On a day, when another diabetic is having a hard time, I’m blessed to have diabetes. While I will do my share of ranting and raving, after 15 years of this disease, I know it, and if someone is having a problem, I can talk to them, and it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside that someone else understands. When I was growing up, I swear I was all alone, nobody else had diabetes, except one other stuck up girl that wouldn’t talk to me until we were seniors in high school, and it sucked. Now adays, though, everyone seems to have it, and they tell me I’m an inspiration, and that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Even though I’m often in a foul mood where my diabetes is concerned, it’s important when other diabetics talk to me that I listen, because I remember having no one to talk to, at least, no one that understood me (and I still swear nobody gets me). There’s a guy in Italy, he found me on Flickr, no clue how, all his pix were labeled in Italian, luckily, I have 7 years of Italian language classes under my belt so I start talking to him. He had all of 2 pictures on his account, one was of him cycling and that’s what tied us together in the beginning. Come to find out, he’s a diabetic, recently (within the last 4 years) diagnosed, and he’s not dealing well with it. I wrote something that made him cry, which in turn made me cry. But here he is, between a rock and a hard place, his mom telling him he can be normal, his friends alienating him, and the cost of insurance and medical supplies in Italy just sucking the life out of him. He doesn’t know how long he can life with this disease. And yet, he found me and we’re talking now several times a day, and I’m just answering his questions, telling him about my experiences and it makes him feel better. I’m blessed that I’m in a position to do so. I get to help other people and helping people put a smile on their face helps put a smile on my face.
Now, I realize that I’ve had some very negative postings as of late, and things have been a little dark around these parts, but I have my dark days, as you’ve previously read, I have my light days as you just read, and then I have my “days”, the days where I just go through the motions because I have to and for no other reason. I can go from one end of the spectrum to the other in a matter of hours, and yes, I do believe that diabetes took and stripped off a lot of me, but on a good day, you’ll see another side, it’s just hard to stay on the good side because diabetes has a way of easily letting me down. But on a good day, I’m doing good things 
This is excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project: Confessions of a Type 1 Diabetic. For the curious, it’s 1542 words bringing my NaNoWriMo total to 12163 words.
I Wish It Had Killed Me…Sometimes
The words are usually yelled when I’m low and emotional, or low and angry, or low, angry and emotional, or high and angry, or just plain angry “I WISH IT HAD KILLED ME”. Those words break my mom’s heart everytime I yell them. I’m usually yelling them at her in a fit of frustration, my poor mom, she takes the brunt of it all. I don’t exactly blame her, but I have no one else to yell at, I can’t exactly yell at my diabetes it won’t respond. She responds. Lately, it’s been “Don’t yell at me, it’s not nice”. Thanks mom, thanks for trying to get me to be nice in my 26th year of life.
When I think about my diabetes and how much I hate it because I really can’t do anything right because everything is always changing, I think that I would’ve rather died when I was 11. Because at 11 not much had gone wrong in my life. Sure, my parents got divorced but I was 2 and don’t remember a thing. My “dad” (aka stepdad) entered my life at age 4 and raised me. I had 2 sisters and a brother and we were all happy little kids. There were good memories before age 11. There are really only two memories that I can remember that aren’t good. When I was in second grade, I got in deep deep trouble for not doing my homework. I hated it, it bored me, therefore I didn’t associate with it. I got sent home with a stack of worksheets easily 1.5 inches deep. My parents weren’t happy. The other instance of trouble that I got into (that I remember because I was probably getting into some kind of trouble on a regular basis, i’m fairly good at that) was in the third grade. I wanted to ride my bike to school instead of walking, I didn’t live too far from the school. So I rode my bike, I was sure there was no way mom was going to know, she worked across town and dad had ridden his bike to work. They found out, I got in trouble, big trouble. That’s the extent of trouble I remember being in before I got diabetes. Since I got diabetes however, that’s another story. I’ve been in all kinds of trouble. I think it started when I was 13. My step mom gave me a shot that she wasn’t gentle about at all, I got pissed because it hurt and she bruised me and I refused for them (my step mom and biological dad) to be involved anymore. I fought them everytime they wanted to see me check my blood. I fought them on every shot they wanted t give me. Finally I won, and when I won, I stopped doing everything. That didn’t go over to well with my doctor at the end of the summer. Thus begun a vicious cycle, I refused to take care of my diabetes on a pretty regular basis after that. I was always in trouble for it, and thus, I really think I would’ve been a happier kid if it had killed me when I was 11. I don’t think I can be blamed for that.
I used to wish it had killed me everytime I couldn’t go to a sleep over. I would sit and yell and scream at my mom who would tell me, they can come over here and sleep over. I thought my mom was lame, she monitored every activity I did, I didn’t think it was cool to have friends over for sleep overs. I had a bed time, she’d recommend activities, etc. I got to do 1 sleep over not at my house, it was at one of the girls from girl scouts. I was 11. I did one sleep over in middle school, she came to my house, and i was miserable because there was nothing to do at my house. That was the last sleep over I ever did. I was invited to plenty, but I always had to decline them. I wish diabetes had killed me. It wasn’t cool to have and everyone was paranoid about it. And I would yell at mom “I WISH I DIDN’T HAVE THIS STUPID DISEASE, I WISH IT HAD KILLED ME”. It robbed me of my childhood, I believed it then and I still believe it now.
When I got denied the ability to go on orchestra trips in the name of my diabetes and mom saying “no one would know how to take care of me if something had happened”, I wish it had killed me. Two years of middle school orchestra and I never got to go on a trip anywhere. Every year in the spring there would be a weekend trip to Glorieta and I didn’t get to go. When it came time for high school, mom said no because the whole year, zero hour and all was spent practicing for competitions, competitions I couldn’t go to because I couldn’t travel, because mom said no, because of my diabetes. I wish it had killed me.
When I couldn’t participate in PE or sports like the other kids, I wish it had killed me.
When I ended up in the hospital in my 23rd year of life because I had managed to go almost a full year with next to no insulin, not checking my blood and trying to drown out the pain of the disease with alcohol, I wish it had killed me.
Everytime I’m taking care of my diabetes and something unexplainable goes horribly wrong, i.e. diabetic ketoacidosis for no good reason, I wish it had killed me. The frustrations are often more than I can handle, especially when I’m taking care of myself. If I’m taking care of myself, nothing should be going wrong, but that’s not the case. I spent last week with ketones and no one could explain why, my blood sugars were in range, and yet, I had small to moderate ketones, for the entire week. It really pissed me off when the doctors decided that they could return my call in 24-48 hrs because it wasn’t an emergency. It pissed me off that when I left the message for the doctor on call that I had mentioned I had been in DKA two months earlier and they still didn’t think it was important to talk to me. I’ve been in DKA twice in the past 3 years, once my doing, once not my doing, but you know what, if I go into DKA again while I’m taking care of myself, I hope it kills me because it’s not worth fighting with the doctors and them thinking that my ketones aren’t an emergency when I’ve had them for a week. These kinds of frustrations (the ones that happen when I’m taking care of myself) make me wish it had killed me.
When I got told I wouldn’t be able to be in the AirForce, I wish it had killed me.
When I got told that skydiving wasn’t in my future, I wish it had killed me (luckily this one got turned around).
Everytime I go on a trip and I have to have someone accompany me because of my diabetes and because I’d be stupid if someone didn’t go with me, I wish it had killed me. I want to be able to travel, I want to be able to go places and do things without my parents, without my grandma, I’m beginning to resent them because of it, and when I really get deep into a mood of resentment, I wish my diabetes had killed me.
Everytime I have to defend why I still live at home with my parents (i.e. hypoglycemic seizures) I wish it had killed me. It sucks to be 26 and to still be living at home with your parents, it sucks that they’re my life line. If I have a seizure they have to give me a glucagon shot, it’s a life or death situation and I shouldn’t have to defend it, and everytime I do, I wish it had killed me.
Everytime there was an argument with mom about my medic alert bracelet that I absolutely hated because people would ask questions about it and it set me apart from all the other kids and I ended up yelling at mom over it “I WISH IT HAD KILLED ME”. Even still today, I won’t wear a bracelet, I will wear my dog tag, but not a bracelet, unless I’m biking, then that’s an exception, but if I’m all dressed up, I’m unmarked. I don’t want my diabetes to be noticed, because once it’s noticed, I have to explain it and give a history, and of all things I hate, I hate explaining it and giving a history. During those times, I wish it would kill me.
When I started bike riding back in March because I so badly wanted to ride in the SoCal Tour de Cure and I discovered that if I was going to go low or if I was starting out high I was screwed, I wish it had killed me. I wish it had killed me because mom felt the need to say “maybe you can’t ride your bike like you’d like to”. I was crying and of course I was yelling at her again, “I HATE THIS DISEASE, I WISH IT HAD KILLED ME”
Everytime I have to pay a large amount of money for diabetic supplies or the insurance to buy the supplies or how insurance won’t pay for certain supplies (constant blood glucose monitoring system), I wish it had killed me, it’d have been a hell of a lot cheaper to die.
Some days are good, some days are bad, most days I loathe my diabetes and on some days, I wish it had killed me. I don’t think that any kid should have to live with this disease, it’s an awful disease, and sometimes, it prohibits a lot from happening, and all the time, it makes kids grow up before their time.
This is excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project: Confessions of a Type 1 Diabetic. For the curious, it’s 1697 words bringing my NaNoWriMo total to 10621 words.
Insurance, I Can’t Afford to Live Without It
Insurance is a big problem for those people with chronic conditions that require medications to keep them alive. Diabetes is one of those conditions. I was very fortunate for the first 13 years of my disease to have my dad working at a good company that provided insurance that really couldn’t be topped. They paid for everything. When I was in the hospital for a couple weeks when I was diagnosed with diabetes the entire stay was covered. When I was in the hospital (ICU) with dka 3 years ago my stay was covered. I’ve been covered through a lot of things. Over $30,000 in hospital bills and we only paid about $300, 1 percent of the total cost. My first pump, 5 years, fully covered, I have no clue what it cost, I never saw an invoice, all the pump supplies, fully covered, I just had to call and reorder them ever month or so (I don’t remember). I was blessed to have daddy working for a good company that provided us with such good insurance. When I graduated highschool, I was able to stay on his plan because I was a full time student in college. And then I turned 25 last year, and I couldn’t get medicaid because even on my poor college student earnings I was making to much money. I couldn’t get blue cross blue shield because of my diabetes. The hospital where all my doctor appointments are had a thing for low income people but not only did I try to contact them on several occasions and get them to send me information, they never sent it to me. I was up shits creek without a paddle. I actually lost my insurance a month before my 25th birthday without my knowledge, I didn’t know until I started receiving $300 bills for doctor’s appointments that should’ve been covered. I freaked. Then a couple weeks before my 25th birthday I received a letter from COBRA.
COBRA saved my life. I had to pay a hefty fee to keep the insurance that I had had all my life, but when it comes down to it, I can’t afford to not have that insurance. In the year and a half that I’ve been paying for COBRA I’ve paid less than 8k. 2 months ago, it paid for itself, I spent four days in the hospital, specifically ICU for diabetic ketoacidocis (dka). I paid $100 for my visit, the cost, a little over $8k.
Currently, I pay a little over $400 a month for my health insurance. If I didn’t have it, I’m looking at $300 in test strips (yes, a dollar a strip), $600 in insulin (2 vials), $200 in pump supplies, and other miscellaneous expenses (lancets, glucose tabs, batteries, alcohol swabs, syringes, and god only knows what I’m forgetting). Half of what I bring home monthly would go to medical supplies if I didn’t have the health insurance I have. And that doesn’t even include doctors visits, which without insurance would average in the $300 a visit range. It’s just amazing to me what we have to do as diabetics to stay alive.
I’m looking at 2 more years of being able to be on COBRA before I have to find a way to pay for all my medical needs. At which point, I ponder:
1) How long do I have to work jobs that I am completely unsatisfied with all in the name of insurance
and
2) What about the concept of socialized insurance
I’ll start with socialized insurance because it was such a brief pondering. Socialized insurance (in my opinion) is going to be crap if that’s what we’re heading for. I imagine it to be what I have now at my current job. Insurance just for the sake of having insurance, it’s not a great plan, the deductibles and co-pays are high, it doesn’t pay for crap, and it’s not going to help you until you’re lying in a hospital bed dying. And actually, if you’re lying in the hospital bed dying, you won’t have need for the insurance in the first place, you are after all dying. That’s my opinion of socialized insurance, and personally, I don’t want any part of it.
And then there’s the whole work to live thing. I shouldn’t have to work to live. I should be able to enter a job that I’ll fully enjoy and not ever have to worry about the benefits of that job. Why should I have to enter a job that’s actually going to be the death of me because of the high stress nature of the type of job I’d get into just to have the great benefits (read: insurance) so that I can live. It’s a whole bunch of bull crap if you ask me. The jobs one enjoys, rarely come with the benefits necessary to survive. I’m in a job right now, I love it and would rather not have to think about leaving it, but the insurance is crap, and I took this job over another job where the insurance would have met what I had growing up (read: CIGNA). I took this job because it was more secure, it was a smaller company, it’s less stressful, and I completely (normally, most of the time) enjoy my job. And because I took it, I suffer, they pay for our insurance, our piece of crap PPO plan through Blue Cross. It pays for nothing (this is what I imagine socialized insurance to be like).
And this whole path of thought brings me to something else. If I had a choice, to sit a job where I was completely bored and miserable because my brain wasn’t being used (which usually leads to huge amounts of trouble) where I’d have excellent medical coverage as opposed to a job that I loved and I woke up each morning excited to go to where I had completely crappy insurance, which would I choose. Would I sacrifice years of my life in the name of happiness, or would I sacrifice happiness in the name of years of my life. Of course, as I write that, I realize that I wouldn’t be fully happy at the happy job because I would be feeling miserable because my diabetes wasn’t receiving the care it deserved.
We’re in between a rock and a hard place no matter how I look at it. So there’s really only one more way to solve this darn insurance conundrum. The makers of all our supplies have to slash their prices. It costs all of like 8 cents to produce a test strip, why am I paying almost a dollar? And don’t give me that research crap, a lot of the research is funded by the government or by charities. Insulin hasn’t changed all that much in the last 15 years, sure, a little tweak here, a little tweak there, so why is it still costing us $300 a vial? My answer, if there were a cure for diabetes (of all types), that epidemic that is growing in the US (largely among the Type 2 diabetes), pharmaceutical companies would lose a lot of money. Some companies gross a billion in profit a year thanks to their diabetes divisions. They should give that money back to us so that we didn’t have to choose between “I LOVE this job” and the “I’m bored to tears job” all in the name of health insurance to pay for the supplies that take of our diabetes to keep us alive so that we can go back to work the next day and do it all over again: “I’m bored to tears”…
This is excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project: Confessions of a Type 1 Diabetic. For the curious, it’s 1329 words bringing my NaNoWriMo total to 8924 words.
Couch Potatoes and Twinkies
I am normally fairly sympathetic towards other diabetics, that is, I’m fairly sympathetic towards other Type 1 diabetics. Type 2 diabetics, I mostly have no sympathy for, mainly because it’s been my experience that if you have type 2 diabetes you’re a Twinkie eating couch potato that was told you had to get out and exercise and eat healthier and you never did. For you, I have no sympathy. It is because of these types of diabetics (type 2 diabetics) that a certain person (read: fourth grade teacher) when she found out that I had gotten diabetes over the summer between fourth and fifth grade said “it was all that sugar you used to eat”. Mind you that I didn’t eat much sugar in my younger years and I don’t exactly eat much sugar now in my older years either. I was lucky if I could trade my sammich or fruit for a brownie with another student and it didn’t happen often. Sugar was not a normal thing on my diet. It was saved for special occasions. No, I did not get diabetes because of a diet issue and I sure as hell didn’t get it because I was as inactive as a slug lying on the pavement. I got it because my body attacked itself. My beta cells that produced insulin were destroyed by my very own immune system. I have an autoimmune disease, not a disease caused by my horrid eating habits (that I don’t and never had had).
Type 1 diabetes is clearly not caused by bad eating habits or a sedentary lifestyle. Type 2 diabetes on the other hand is, and it is for the Type 2 diabetics that I have little to no sympathy for. It is (in my opinion) that Type 2 diabetics bring diabetes upon themselves due to their health and unhealthy habits. It is the Type 2 diabetics that bring so much misunderstanding of this disease to the people and let people think that everyone brought it upon themselves. The world (read: me) thinks that diabetics are lazy couch potatoes that sit around eating Twinkies and that we deserve to live the rest of our lives with taking insulin via injections and the side effect of increased health risks because we don’t take care of ourselves. I guess I got on my soapbox; I’m stepping off it now. Actually, I’m not, I’m frustrated by Type 2 diabetics, and the misconceptions caused by them, and it’s a misconception and frustration that all Type 1 diabetics have to live with, and then we have to try to correct it. Just because some people (read: Type 2 diabetics) got diabetes because of their sedentary lifestyle and horrid eating habits doesn’t mean that we all did. And actually, I’m being a little harsh perhaps, because you don’t have to be a Twinkie eating couch potato to get Type 2 diabetes, but some people were/are, others were not.
It really frustrates me that there are people in my family that are pre-diabetic because of of their weight which is an attribute of their poor eating habits and lack of exercise and they don’t care. It frustrates that they’ve known what diabetes has done to me and how I’ve had to fight with it for 15 years and all the things I’ve had to do to stay alive and they know most the things I haven’t done that have almost killed me and yet they don’t correct what they’re doing. It frustrates me that people that are pre-diabetic are told that they need to eat better and get more exercise if they don’t want to be a full fledged insulin dependent diabetic and they don’t heed what the doctors tell them and thus they experience what Type 1 diabetics experience from the moment they’re diagnosed. It frustrates me that they’re already having to check their blood once a day and yet it wouldn’t bother them if they had to check more. IDIOTS is all I ever want to scream, do you not know what you’re doing by not taking care of yourself, that maybe if you ate better and exercised a little you’d be better off than I ever was when I was diagnosed with diabetes. Hell, they’re better off right now than I ever was after I was diagnosed with diabetes. I just don’t understand why, in today’s day and age, people don’t understand what they’re doing to themselves when they don’t take care of themselves. Why they don’t take the second chance that was given to them when the doctors say “you need to eat better, you need to exercise, you can control this” why they feel the need to let it get to the point where they’re taking pills and then after the pills they let it go a little bit further to where they’re taking shots and then all of the sudden they feel the need to proclaim themselves as a Type 1 diabetic. No, you’re not a Type 1 diabetic, you never were, and you never will be. You went from being a Type 2 diabetic to an insulin dependent Type 2 diabetic (all because of your stupidity if I do say so myself.)
My frustration with Type 2 diabetics stems from what I know, couch potatoes and Twinkies, and these are the diabetics I have no sympathy for. There are many of us (Type 1 diabetics) that didn’t bring diabetes upon ourselves, and I just can’t understand why someone would bring it upon their selves, especially when they’re given the chance to control it before it gets so out of control that they’re pushed into the level of care that Type 1 diabetics have to give themselves (i.e. shots, constant blood glucose monitoring)…Type 2 diabetes is preventable, Type 1 is not…there’s no reason that the healthy, non-diabetics (who aren’t pre-disposed for Type 1 diabetes) can’t prevent this disease from entering their lives…
This is excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project: Confessions of a Type 1 Diabetic. For the curious, it’s 1020 words bringing my NaNoWriMo total to 7597 words.
Big Dreams Gone…Just Gone
The month of November has a lot going on, Thanksgiving and Black Friday everybody knows about. But there are two other particular events stick out in my head, World Diabetes Day and Veterans Day. Both days are a reminder of what I have and what I’ll never be able to do. It’s rough.
When I was younger I’d run around the house in my dad’s white Navy sailor hats. I had one for the longest time and it hung out in my toy box. My dad was in the Navy, I had an Uncle that had been in the Navy, I had a couple grandfathers that had been in the Army, cousins that were in the Army, I wanted to be in the Air Force. I thought it would be really cool to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force. That was one of the things that I wanted to be when I grew up (among millions of others things). I was a typical child that was constantly changing her mind about what I wanted to be, but to grow up in be in the Air Force, I really wanted to do that.
And then I got diabetes. And it really didn’t hit me until a few years after I was diagnosed with diabetes that I couldn’t be in the Air Force. In middle school, JROTC wasn’t an option just like PE wasn’t an option (Wins and Losses in the Battles of Diabetes). ROTC wasn’t an option in College because you’re considered a Cadet and it’s an automatic enrollment into four years of active service duty.
I used to get phone calls from the Army and the Navy and they’d talk to me and whatnot right up until I said, “I’m a diabetic, you’ve not considered me before, why is it you’re considering me know, is there no record in your files that indicates I’ve been contacted numerous times before and that each time you turn me down because of this chronic illness I posses. Or did a desk job open up that I can do, did you guys finally decide that my brain is worth just as much as the brawn that you guys look for? That my brain is worth just as much as some non-diabetics ability to go climb walls and scurry under ropes?” They’d sound pitiful the next time they spoke “We’re sorry m’am we don’t have that on record, and we’re sorry but we can’t take civilians that have a chronic illness into the armed forces.” I haven’t heard from the armed forces in several years now. I guess after the last time I laid into them they got the message and made a note.
I have found ways around all the things I was told that as a diabetic I couldn’t do. The one thing that I haven’t found a way around was my entry into the Air Force. I was so stubborn about it at one point that I was going to train and get myself in shape and prove that I could do in boot camp as well as the other “normal” recruits. To prove that I could run two miles in 19 minutes and 45 seconds, that I could run a mile and a half in 13 minutes and 56 seconds, that I could do 50 situps in 2 minutes and that I could do 27 push-ups in 2 minutes. I wanted to prove so badly that I was just as good as any other recruit in boot camp, that I could make it just like them.
But the recruiters would tell me that we’re not just as good as the other recruits. We being diabetics or any other person with some kind of chronic illness that would impede them from being able to stand on the front lines at a moments notice and serve our country. That when it comes down to it, in reality we’re not as good as “anybody” else. That anything that would cause us to have problems during high stress situations wasn’t acceptable, thus we weren’t acceptable and we couldn’t serve our country. That anyone that needed to have medications that were life critical wasn’t good for military mission critical jobs because if we were sent off to some other country our medications may not be immediately available if they were available at all. And it was actually worse than that, I vaguely remember something about how “enlisted people have to be able to carry out any mission…and you can’t” They’re so nice when they speak to us.
There was one thing they never could answer, and it was the one thing that probably pisses me off the most about the armed forces. There are regular Billy Joe Bobs sitting in offices doing paper work, there are regular Billy Joe Bobs sitting behind computers interpreting new codes, there are regular Billy Joe Bobs all around the armed forces who may or may not have ever been on the front lines in some epic battle that was going to save our country if they lost their lives. Why, with a brain such as mine, couldn’t I have one of those jobs? They can’t answer that question…Why if I can’t be a fighter pilot, can’t I help design/program the simulators that pilots learn in?
It really irks me that if there were a draft, people would go into hiding to not get drafted and yet there are people that would love to serve their country and we’re being denied because of a disease we didn’t ask for. Just because we’re deemed physically incapable doesn’t make us mentally handicapped as well. There are some things that we could do in the military just as well as “any” other person.
I had a dream to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force and because I’m not as good as “any” other person, that dream has been decimated…It was a big dream, and now it’s gone…this isn’t a case of you can do that if you just take care of yourself…they (the military) wouldn’t care if I had the best controlled case of diabetes known to man kind, I’d still be denied my dream.
This is excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project: Confessions of a Type 1 Diabetic. For the curious, it’s 1062 words bringing my NaNoWriMo total to 6577 words.