On a good day, diabetes isn't a bad disease to have - I say this all the time. On a bad day, when I'm so crazy, infuriated and angry about the slightest, next-to-nothing, when I'm 'exploitative' hating myself for finding a normal day so difficult and I just can't get my sugar to come down; when I'm so scared my eye bleeds again and a world of opportunity threatening to be taken away from me; well then I'll seriously consider swapping you my diabetes for something else, you take your pick.
We sit around these closed groups, shuttered off from prying, probably numbed and uninterested eyes, ebbing closer on folding wooden chairs, and it strikes me, that to read into a diabetes blog on a personal level, to commit to comment whilst disguising our truer self from scrutiny; we are more-or-less embedding ourselves into the world of Alcoholic's Anonymous, with all inherent shame and inaccurate social conclusion.
Diabetes Awareness Week then, is that the solution? Depends on what the awareness is I suppose. Because when Diabetes Awareness stands for diagnosis, balloons popped, smiles and cheers; well that's not my diabetes, and in turn that diabetes awareness inherits me shame. But then again, as I always say, 'diabetes isn't a bad disease to have - on a good day.'
*On a good day definition
We live in a time when I won't have to wrestle a Tiger to the ground to feed my wife. I could probably even hobble to the shops for some fish sticks on an amputated foot. Also, with level sugar for a couple of day, I feel awesome.
Paul Cathcart