Just like in the movie, today we’re doing a swap. If you could switch chronic diseases, which one would you choose to deal with instead of diabetes? And while we’re considering other chronic conditions, do you think your participation in the DOC has affected how you treat friends and acquaintances with other medical conditions?
I’m drawing a blank. It’s almost like swapping crap for crap. What different disease would I want my kids to swap with diabetes. Sorry, I can’t. However, I will swap with my self, yes, I will do that for this post. Banned from Diabetes Blog Week they may, defiant rebel I will remain. So let me tell you a fictional short story of mye have Type 1 Diabetes and interacting with my 3 girls. Call it a turning of the tables.
THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL STORY:
Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t blogged in a few weeks, things are busy with 3 kids. The older they get the more they ask about my diabetes. My oldest even says our cat can smell my lows, funny, I starting to wonder myself. I do have a neat little story I wanted to share with you from last Saturday.
As many of you know I like to try to sleep in on Saturday morning and let the kids wake me up. Well, last Saturday was a bit of a trip, to say the least. I ran high the day before, all day, and I felt like crap. 300′s all day, just could not get the darn BG down. Being it was Friday night and I wanted to have a quite dinner with my wife I did what I should not do. You guessed it, rage bolus, call it the rage bolus from hell. I even grabbed my Humolog vial (no I will not try Apidra) and a needle.
Me stuck myself in the calf, an I idea I got from an old d-buddy, and did not (whatever you call that exercise you do when you flex up and down on your toes, you know pick your heel of the floor, don’t poke fun of me my memory has gotten bad after forty) and it worked. My bg dropped like a rock and it did not feel good at all. I went from 326 to 91 in way to short of a time. I was trying to watch a movie with me wife but forgot the title. I just put on my happy face and enjoyed my time with her. I took so much out of me. My mom even called, and as soon as I started talking she knew I was not having a good d-day, she dealt with my diabetes for 16 years before I moved out, still worries about me (lol that’s funny). We talk about 5 minutes.
I drank some apple juice before bed so I didn’t crash later in the night. Me being absent-minded, I had shut off my alarms on dexter (aka Dexcom G4) and never turned them on before I fell asleep. I awoke the next morning to a weird felling and my girls telling their mom that I was really low (that cat was nowhere to be found). My wife got me up and out of bed and grabbed my meter. She shoved what seemed like a happy hour mug of OG in my face and told me I was 36. It seemed like odd, I sat there and drank OJ and did not know what really was going on. Finally I realized I was at the table with a plate of eggs and bacon in-front of me. I like both!. My wife is good, she understands rebound highs. I didn’t have any, and I enjoyed my Saturday with my lovely girls, I felt like crap, but I still enjoyed. All in the day of Me, that one with a hollow pancreas.
That was all a fictional story of me having Type 1 and not my 2 girls. I must say that having 2 girls with Type 1 and being involved in the DOC has help me be more compassionate toward other people living with illness and chronic disease. I don’t think that we have it worse than anyone else. I don’t wear their shoes, but I try to have empathy though. If you have empathy then you become a little more open with people and they sometimes need help, they need someone who can listen. They may not have a support base and I might be the first person who has listened with a compassionate ear. I think the key word is listen compassionately, not an easy thing to learn, but its a necessary life skill.
Godspeed
Tim Brand
