Hi Everyone
It has been a few months! A lot has happened- is happening. Just when I thought that I was never going to start getting better, I finally found work. Within two days, my blood sugar was bottoming out. I started having lows two or three times a day. I am mostly holding at 7mmol. I tend to elevate a little bit if I am late with meals, and quite a bit if I don't sleep regularly. That has been difficult, as I am an insomniac. I've been strictly enforcing a solid meal/insulin/sleep schedule that involves a series of truly irritating alarms. My work schedule bounces more than I would like, and leaves absolutely no room for deviation. I rebel every few weeks and end up staying up all night, but I always pay for it.
My sugars are consistent, though, which is great. Any time they deviate, I always know what caused it. No help with funding my insulin- but now that I'm working it isn't completely impossible. I'm going one box at a time. I'm very lucky to have a boss that sees how serious my medical condition is. I think it became a real thing for him and my coworkers when my blood sugar skyrocketed to 33 at work after a night up with food poisoning. I managed to get it back down within 4 hours, but it was terrifying. I'm just glad that I can feel the highs again, and that I can tell the difference between the highs and lows again.
Despite my successes controlling my blood sugars, I'm feeling depressed this week. I think because I feel like I have no freedom. Every time my alarm goes off, I am filled with frustration and exhaustion, because it feels like I just turned the last one off. I found myself starting to ignore them and had to remind myself of the reasons why my alarms are important- I simply am a scatter brain and I forget all about my diabetes without them. The alarms have definitely educated my husband about how often I have to consider my disease and how much time it consumes. Funny, but I have heard so much that I can either let this disease control me, or I can control it. But the truth is that even when you control it, it controls you. It completely dictates every hour of my day, when I do things, how I do things, what I can and cannot do.
I want to get pregnant. My Husband has a daughter from a previous relationship, so he is indifferent on the subject. He is happy with or without another addition to our family. I hate that it feels so much like he's telling me he doesn't care. It feels a lot like the "yes, dear" treatment. I'm 25. I've never had a child. This is my first marriage (and hopefully my only). I've known my entire life that I wanted to be a mother. And of course, my older sister, who never wanted kids, has now had three. My younger sister is extremely fertile and has managed to get pregnant several times in the last two years (though through emergency contraception and a miscarriage has never carried a child to term). Sometimes I hate them, because for them its so easy. I had a miscarriage last year, and have been told that getting pregnant will be a challenge, and carrying a child to term will be even harder, not to mention the complications of childbirth. I wish I could say I feel like I have support- with how hard that experience will be for me, it would be nice for my husband to want it as much as I do. Sometimes I get so sad and depressed about it that I think about having a historectomy-- because I'd rather give it up than have hope in vain. I feel like crying a lot.
I think it's because deep down I know I'll never have it. It's just one more thing that this disease took away from me. I work a minimum wage job because I can't afford college. I can't even get a credit card because I always chose not to, until I felt I could handle one. Almost half of my income goes towards treating my diabetes, and it always will. I'm never going to amount to anything and there's nothing I can do about it. I can't even get knocked up. I get so frustrated at myself, too, for snivelling and pitying myself.
Every day I see Mothers with their small, soft, sweet, powder-scented babies, holding their little warm bodies against their chests, rocking them to sleep, kissing their smooth cheeks. And I just somehow know I will never do that. I'll spend my life mooning over other people's children, silently pissed at myself for something I physically cannot do. I'm angry. I'm so angry. I just want a sense of purpose, like anyone. Staying alive can't be all there is to living.
And dammit, I'm crying again.