From my blog Don't Fear Diabetes (every other entry posted here)
Day 7 – Dream a little dream – life after a cure. To wrap up Diabetes Blog Week, let’s pretend a cure has been found. We are all given a tiny little pill to swallow and *poof* our pancreases are back in working order. No side effects. No more insulin resistance. No more diabetes. Tell us what your life is now like. Or take us through your first day celebrating life without the Big D. Blog about how you imagine you would feel if you no longer were a Person With Diabetes.
I know the expression is better late than never, but is there a limit? I hope not.
Here is my final post for Diabetes Blog Week, a full 5 days after the end of Diabetes Blog Week.
I started this blog to try to describe the positive changes diabetes has made in my life. I feel like I have become a more disciplined person, a healthier person, probably a more compassionate person, and certainly a better educated person (when it comes to diabetes anyway). I’m getting introduced to new people every day through the Diabetes Online Community (DOC), and I understand my body in ways I never did before. My work, my leisure, and of course all of my meals, all involve diabetes to some degree or another.
What would I do if it were cured?
Well, first I would celebrate. Any step towards alleviating human suffering is one I am all for. As www.diabetes24-7.com/?p=283');" href="http://www.diabetes24-7.com/?p=283" target="_blank">Elizabeth at Diabetes 24-7 recently noted, while for Westerners diabetes remains a serious health problem, for most of the developing world, it is a death sentence. The high cost of treatment and ignorance about the disease mean many die before they are even diagnosed. A cure would, hopefully, go a long way to changing that. A cure would erase ther anxiety of diabetic parents everywhere, wondering when the next call from the school nurse or sleepover will come telling them about the latest low or high. A cure would also seriously lessen my own chances of early mortality. I’m all for that too.
But I also can’t help but think that, having been cured of diabetes, I would lose some of my identity. The effect of a chronic condition like this is difficult to overstate, and its impact on my life has been thorough. I think having diabetes builds character, and develops good habits. I also don’t think I’ve ever been as good at anything as I am at being diabetic. Not to say I’m that good at being diabetic, because I still have so much to learn, but I AM learning it, and will continue to learn it, more and more every day. In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell discusses the theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to truly become world class at anything (he uses Bill Gates and The Beatles, among others, in his examples). I have an attention problem for sure, and a ton of interests. I was never the person who was excellent at one thing, but was pretty good at lots of things. Being diabetic is probably the only thing I will ever spend 10,000+ hours practicing. Does that mean I’m not rooting for a cure? NO WAY! But I can’t pretend that being cured of diabetes would mean keeping my life just as it is, only minus the shots and diet control. I would lose a very hard-earned part of myself along with it.