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I'm ading below a blog post I did a few years ago that can hopefully tell you a bit more of my diabetes story.
Diabetes life: my multi personas
It was diabetes awareness month so I thought there is no better time to shed a light on what a day might look like in the life of type 1 diabetic me.
It’s with no surprise that a diabetic can grow different personalities fueled by a very demanding body. I like to believe in this multi-me characters that juggle through different daily challenges, from when I'm disguising a hypo* while still in a meeting, to the times I feel exhausted with these daily fights but I'm still holding a smile acting like it's just another ordinary day.
Let me tell you one thing though, there is nothing ordinary in the living of a diabetic day. True fact, it requires quite a lot of daily maths and data analysis skills to manage diabetes in a successful way, so when I do achieve that at least for one entire consistent month, I have all the reasons to be happy, proud and celebrating. Yes, things that can make a diabetic happy can also be quite different in some occasions.
*hypoglycemia = lower in sugar levels in the bloodstream
Personality 1 - the hopeful!
Process of waking up is as normal for diabetics as for anyone else, except if that happens in the middle of the night, and I wake up all shaky and sweaty, heart racing and brain slowing down ...a great lot. Then it means my calculations in the previous evening failed me completely and my glycemic levels dropped to extreme lows and are sitting in a very alarming red alert. The positive thing? Well, I woke up! The same 'hopeful me' that went to bed with that last thought - "I hope I didn't over do it" (thinking of insulin units) wakes up with yet another hopeful thought - "oh please tell me that it’s not high" (thinking of sugar levels). How challenging can it be? Reaching that middle ground, not low nor high, that small range of green numbers in a 24/7, 365/6 days per year rotation, what a mission!
Hopeful me is a strong persona, it's resillient, it continuously fall only to rise again and again. It keeps me going forward even when the mind and body are in pure pain and exhaustion.
Personality 2 - the "Groundhog Day" syndrome - the power of repetition!
For many of us the secret to achieving consistent green glycemic readings is in knowing exactly how many units of insulin certain foods in precise amounts will require. Trust me, there is no book that can tell us that. First, because every person has a very unique body, metabolic system, reaction speed... Second, because it requires trying, to see how it works for unique you. Of course books can provide guidance but there is no way to tell how each person will react without going through trials. In my case, things got even a bit trickier with the ckd (chronic kidney disease) diet restrictions adding a bit more ordeals to what was already hard. After a certain number of trials with food that I actually enjoy eating, I tend to play safe and go on repeat mode risking the odd comment of colleagues, friends and sometimes even family - "gosh, you really like eating that, don't you?" To what, I normally reply with my best annoyed yet happy smile.
Having a group of foods in my usuals helps me in coordinating diet with other routines that can also have an impact in my sugar levels variation, such as: exercise, colds, stress, periods... There is a lot to put into the equation when doing calculations for insulin intake so yes, please don't judge me for being a bit repetitive.
Personality 3 - the great pretender!
A lot of times I find myself lost in "what if" dream bubbles. What if I was not a diabetic and I didn't have developed ckd or lost a great bit of my right eye sight? What if I could go anywhere without having to think of the extra insulated thermic bag of insulin and the finger pricking and the sensor awkward justifications at airports? What if I could eat anything I felt like completely guilt-free? What if I could date without feeling that my little appendix is not a hell of a great deal for a "normal" person to accept? What if I dropped my self-protective shield and stopped being scared of opening up to others or simply stopped thinking on their behalf? What if my days would become easier to handle?
Diabetics can be great pretenders! It is not that we spend life pretending we are someone we are not, it's that we spend life pretending it can be as easy to live a diabetic life as being diabetic-free and we do it to the point we actually truly believe in it making us much stronger warriors in the diabetic fight. We make that possible by encarnating this special persona. Stepping out of the pretender, what I can say with all my honesty and belief is that being a diabetic is challenging and sometimes overwhelming but when I finally accepted it as not being an odd extension of me, everything became a tiny bit easier.
Personality 4 - the super hero!
A few weeks in through the first lockdown I bumped into one of my neighbours at the lift. He was super pale, looked stressed and he was staring at me with his eyes wide open. I live on the 13th floor and he lives above me so there was a lot of time there for awkwardness so I decided to break silence with that familiar sentence - 'odd times no?' he started hyperventilating and rushing a lot of thoughts out "this is an unfair battle, we have no clue what we are fighting with, we can't see it, it's everywhere, we can die in a matter of days". He was clearly having the start of a panic attack and although I was super aligned with his feelings he pushed my mind to go somewhere completely different, back in time 30 years to the day I was diagnosed with diabetes and was suddendly forced to realise that life is a very delicate, fragile gift. That moment, he knew what I have been knowing for many years, we can lose control of life and we can lose life without being able to do anything to stop that from happening.
For 30 years, I have known that my diabetic management, good or bad, will determine how or if I age. For the past 30 years, I have lived with hypos that can make me almost lose brain function, the ability to think or speak, and make me eat everything I have in the cupboard, and can even make me sweat as if I had a heater next to my face regardless of where I might be (it doesn't really respect wishes for privacy); and I have lived with hypers** that make me feel tired all the time, continously thirsty and consequently making me wake up several times during the night to wee while in the background destroying my blood vessels and nerve cells.
**hyperglycemia = excess of sugar levels in the blood
At the end, do you see how these personas, these little Martinhas, are part of me all the time? For the past 30 years, I've been The Hopeful because yes, hope is the last thing to die and I still have high hopes for a cure. I have been doing a Bill Murray Groundhog in the way I eat, to guarantee optimised sugar levels, I have been a Pretender to make sure my head is always held up high and hell yeah a Super Hero carrying on with life, with ambitions, with fights and achievements, with heart breaks and new friendships even if emotionally exhausted and drained by having to calculate every single gram I eat, every unit of insulin I take, how fast my metabolism might be, having to endure injections and finger pricking all to make sure I can live yet another 30 years and hey, why not? even more.
