I think I had Diabetes in 2016

I think I had diabetes in 2016. I know there were nights that I didn't sleep and days where I slept too much because my blood sugar didn't really do what I had planned for it that day. There were finger-pricks and site changes and pump battery changes. There was blood and insulin and sticky-leftover residue from CGM tape. Diabetes was there. I'm sure of it. I can't tell you what my last A1c is, not because I don't want to, but because I don't remember. If it was better or worse than the one before that, I have no idea. But I am vaguely aware that at a few points along the year I let someone siphon some blood out of my arm to produce some readings that I paid no attention to.

I lost my diabetes voice in 2016. It hung in there for a little while at the start. I just got too tired, too busy, too overwhelmed with life to keep hearing it. "Check Your BG" got swamped by the sounds of my rattling washing machine every Saturday morning. "Change Your Basal Rates" was drowned out by copious amounts of Netflix. "Advocate!" couldn't be heard beneath my new nephew's sweet little coos. I didn't take "Be prepared" along to work with me each day, and found myself completely out of test strips, insulin or both more times than I cared to count. (Thankfully there were people close by who helped me pick up the slack during those moments of complete unpreparedness).

In 2016  I let diabetes 'just be there' quietly in the background. I began to accept that sometimes you can't have perfect control...and that that sometimes might span for a year or more. Life was too busy for diabetes.

I think I need my diabetes voice though. My diabetes needs my diabetes voice. It helps.