What would I change about diabetes?
Not one thing. I know that sounds crazy right? I mean surely all diabetics would change something about our disease? Not me. I would not change a thing.
You have got to love the unpredictability, the sudden changes, the no rhyme or reason that comes with this disease. The lows, the highs, the times the doctors stare at your numbers and ask why did this happen? I adore the loss of privacy, and the loss of self-sufficiency that comes with this disease. Let’s face it how else do you leave the house as your own built in traveling adventure? Every day it is more than something it is everything. That is what I so love about this disease.
Change something and what do you have? Well for one you might get predictability, how boring is that? I do not want predicable I want challenge, the continuous striving to be the best my doctor expects me to be. I want the puzzled looks, the judgmental attitude, the game show atmosphere that diabetes adds to my life.
I want the reality series, Diabetic for a week. You know B-list Celebrity contestants, points for most blood sugar tests, pump monitoring, maybe stand them in front of DQ and show them their family enjoying blizzards. Stuff like that. Challenges like pick your food, pick your exercise and most of all pick your night time monitoring.
I want the 17 meters (6 on my belt), the barrage of emails about how to get a cure and the expensive test strips. I like leaving home for a week and forgetting my supplies or break my belt clip or not writing in my logbook and being scolded later. All of that makes us the troopers we are. I stick my tongue out at this disease every day and say hey I can beat you, you cannot get me down. Take your best shot.
I do those things because that is what we as diabetics do every single day. Change something about the disease itself? Never, I like diabetes in the same way I like avocadoes, I don’t. Oh and I like it that way.
Change something like make it crazier? Naw we have enough on our plates as it is. I mean this thing has taken its best shot and we are proving we are equal to the task. Sure we could take more, but most people with diabetes, have other stuff to think about as well. So I say we do not need more on our plates. I would not change a thing about diabetes.
Of course there was that one thing I would change, you know the big thing. I would get rid of it altogether. Make it obsolete. Tear it up spit it out. Wipe it from the face of the earth. Yeah change one thing about diabetes? I would even accept getting rid of it for the next generation. Cancel the finger sticks of the future.
Change something about diabetes? I suppose I would change that one big thing, after all working on the margins is not going to cut it. Getting rid of it is the one change, and maybe the only change, I would totally embrace.
This post is my July entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival. If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at
http://diabetescaf.org/2014/06/july-dsma-blog-carnival-4/ the topic this month is:
If you could change one thing about diabetes, (besides not having it), what would you change? Why?
Ok, so I only sort of answered the question, call it writer prerogative.
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