"Does it hurt?"

Community Share Your Stories
1

When I was brand new to type 1 diabetes so many years ago, the most horrible thing about it was that I had to take shots and that the shots “hurt”. Later on when i thought about maybe using an insulin pump, the most horrible thing about it was that I would be attached to this thing all the time.

Today, I was waiting for my lunch to heat in the microwave oven at work. Someone asked me if I took the finger stick blood tests. They asked me if they hurt. From where I am nowadays, a question like that doesn’t even cross my mind. Living with diabetes has been so much more complicated that the the minor sting of a needle or a lancet, or the handling of a pump. It is just so much more complex than just these external inconveniences. I forget sometimes how much those external inconveniences are the face of diabetes to so many people who don’t have it.

2

That’s one of the first things people ask me when they find out I’m diabetic… “Do you have to prick your finger all the time?” Today a guy tld me he could never do it, but I told him he could if he had to. When people ask me if it hurts, I have to laugh, because it’s such an absurd idea that out of everything this disease forces us to deal with, the discomfort of a finger prick would really matter. But I remember I didn’t know squat about diabetes before I had it, so I can still see it from their perspective and I understand.