Diabetes Blog Week Day 3 - Cleanin' Out My Closet

Yesterday we kept stuff in, so today let's clear stuff out.  What is in your diabetic closet that needs to be cleaned out?  This can be an actual physical belonging, or it can be something you're mentally or emotionally hanging on to.  Why are you keeping it and why do you need to get rid of it?

I don't think I ever quite forgave my pancreas for leaving me. For packing its bags and stealth-sneaking away in the middle of the night. No note. No goodbye kiss. It left. Just like that. I had a working pancreas, then I didn't. I should've microchipped the damn thing. Maybe in 10 years time I would get a call to say it had done an 'Incredible journey' Chance, Sassy & Shadow style and found its way home.

I just kind of shoved those feelings of abandonment deep into my closet, like so many pairs of shoes I didn't want my husband to know I bought. 

So maybe it’s time I light up the funeral pyre and let it go. But with much less singing. I don't actually like Frozen and I find it repugnant (New favourite word) that I know what that song even is. 

I’ll pick a funeral home. Write my Eulogy. Eulogy to a dead pancreas.

“Today we mourn my dear, beloved, dead pancreas. He was a good pancreas, a hard working pancreas, who was taken at the prime of his life, at the tender age of 22. I close my eyes and imagine that he was needed for a higher purpose. I imagine he fulfilled his purpose here in this life, and got be reincarnated as a higher life form. Maybe a heart.   Perhaps, in another life, I will see him again.

I am greatful for every moment we got to spend together. We ate a lot of cake together. It was his favourite food. Indulged in chocolate. Sometimes we even ate potato together. Mostly I miss the way he would let me eat popcorn. I miss eating popcorn with my pancreas. 

We took holidays together. He never brought a ticket, I would just smuggle him through the airport security in my stomach. 

When someone you love passes away, there is a strong temptation to remember them perhaps a little too well. Misdeeds are forgotten. Offenses are forgiven. Only the most shining characteristics of our loved ones make it into the version of them that we keep with us when they depart. My pancreas’ only fault was in leaving me behind, to toil without it.” 

At this point I’ll probably start wailing hysterically and beat upon the tiny tiny coffin I will buy for it. By coffin I mean shoe box. It costs a lot of money to take over your own pancreatic duties, I can't afford a coffin.

I suppose there will be a wake. People will bring me cards and flowers and cry. I have already cried hysterically and mourned, so I will probably just walk around, happy as larry, trying to find the cake people bring you when you’re upset. For now, seeing as I am pretending to bury my pancreas today, I will just eat my leftover wedding cake. I bet my pancreas regrets leaving me now. My wedding cake is delicious (White chocolate and honeycomb with apricot buttercream, anyone? I can see you salivating).

Farewell, Sweet Pancreas, Parting is such sweet sorrow.

The Upside to Diabetes

I don't have anything deep and meaningful to say. Feeling light-hearted.

So today we're lumbering off down the road less traveled and listing (yes, a list, again) potential good side effects to come from having diabetes. Yes, I know these don't make up for having diabetes. Its just fun to imagine the super-powers it can give you.

Self-Imposed Compulsory Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you take any of these potential good side effects of diabetes as gospel. Some of them may be illegal. I'm not sure.
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- You know that rule in Event (and other) Cinemas, were they don't like you to bring in food from other places? Totally doesn't apply to a diabetic. Go to Woolies, buy your real and completely not-watered down coke for $30000 less and walk right in. They can't take hypo treatment off a diabetic.
  I actually use this one all the time to bring lollies in because the lollies available are really not nom.

- Parking fine? You can't legally move your car if you're below 5 (so long as you take insulin or oral hypoglycaemic agents). You just had a reaaaallllly long hypo. That lasted 4 hours. Whilst you were shopping in Myer. Yup.

- Once upon a time I forgot to vote. I got a fine. But its all good because I had a log book full of hypo numbers to photocopy and send in. Fine wiped. All cheer.

- Leaving work early to go to your endo appointment. Which may or may not happen every Friday afternoon, enabling you to beat the coast traffic. Arriving at the Coast early win.

- Occasionally I struggle to climb up to the top of the small mountain of cups, plates, knifes and cheese graters in my kitchen and shudder as I submerge my fingers into scalding hot water to wash them all up. But I can always count on a mid-wash up hypo to stay my hand as I get into the gritty pots and pans. Advantage? I got to do all the easy to clean cups & plates, and my partner has to do all the hard stuff like pans and grills, despite the fact that he cooked with them.

- Vacuuming = hypo. Therefore the vacuuming is no longer on my job list ever again.

- Skipping queues at the pathology collection place and never having to do a fasting blood test ever again. Gotta be above 5 to drive, no breakfast = not above 5 = never making it to the pathology place.

- Basically anywhere that you aren't supposed to eat, diabetics can. People are ignorant to diabetes, both fortunately and unfortunately, and many still labor under the delusion that we must eat at specific times and stick to absolute strict routines or we die. Instantly, on the spot in front of them. I'm one of those people who snacks a lot...small amounts of food over the course of the day, and hate going to things where I can't eat. Not a problem anymore because I just say I *have* to eat and viola: stuffing face with chocolate whilst everyone else around you mutters crankily in time to their hunger-starved growling stomachs.

- Pretty cases & skins for pumps/meters.

- Fussy eater? So am I. "I have diabetes, I can't eat that". This includes mushy peas. They have carbs, right?

- On occassion I get to pretend to be a doctor. That thing on my hip is totally a pager. It's nice to play dress-ups and pretend-games when you're an adult, because people don't realise that that's what you're doing, and will treat you all respectable-like when they think you can cure their disease. Also doctors get to the start of the line, because they have to go save lives. That said, hypos also get you to the start of the line, because otherwise you die. Instantly, on the spot in front of people.

- One day when I've had too many annoying questions about my pump, I'm going to tell somebody that my pump is a new police tracking device and I was just let out of jail. I'm really looking forward to this day.

- The world makes more sense when everyone and everything in it is diabetic. Completely mundane things all of a sudden have explanations. I think we already covered how JK basically chronicles diabetes in Harry Potter. Think about strange things that have happened. Add diabetes. It clicks into place.

- Diabetes gives me bigger boobs. How? Add pump to bra. Viola. Almost-sortof-pretend cleavage. And if I want to dress up as a dude? Pump in pants. Bulge happening down there. The funny thing is, this happened accidentally once when I was using a flesh-coloured pump thigh belt that I had pulled up too high. Peeked out under my dress. Kept getting the weirdest stares in the bank.

- Legally carrying sharp objects. Spare lancing device lancets can be used for opening things when no scissors are around.

- Laughs.

- Stories. What stories have you collected since D that are unique and could only happen to a diabetic?


Biggest Super-power? THE DOC BABY!!! I never felt community until Morty decided that I was the one from the prophecy, tried to kill me and gave me pump-shaped scars on my forehead...I mean stomach.

How do I hypo? Let me count the Ways

How do I hypo? Let me count the ways.
I hypo in the 3's and 2's and sometimes 1's as well.

• Mild hypos, where you feel a niggling sense of being over-hot and a little confused, but you can pop a few of the sweet things and move on without so much a second thought
• Moderate hypos
• Giggling hypos, everything is funny
• The hypos when you're too tired to chew your jellybeans so you start choking on them instead
• The hypos caused by shopping. Secretly, I think retailers are ok with this, because hypo brain doesn't care about prices and just buys
• The hypos in the supermarket, where you stand in the vegetable isle looking for the funny vegie that you saw a lady walk past with and you just have to eat it, despite not knowing what it is, and knowing that it probably has negligable carbs.
• The other hypos in the supermarket where you stand in the lolly isle looking at all the choices you have and buying all or none because you can't make up your mind
• The other other hypos in the supermarket when you talk to your food and the supermarket guy hears you
• The hypos where your boyfriend gets frustrated because you take soooo long to chew the jellybean or drink the juice. He usually complains of chest pains afterwards
• The post-coital hypos, when you would rather be cuddling
• The hypos caused by hot showers, where you feel about to pass out due to a combination of hypo and heat, and your 1st instinct is to get dressed incase so whoever comes to your rescue doesn't find you passed out naked
• The hypos that take an hour to come out of
• The hypos where you just keep dropping, so you eat and eat and in the end you want to vomit, which might result in another hypo
• Olympic hypos, caused by seeing the Aussie team compete
• Exercise hypos, which you don't recognize until late, and then you have to hobble home slowly so as not to exasperate it
• The hypos that happen everytime you are running late to something that starts dead-on-time
• The end of the day hypos, which only happen after long days at work when you can't wait to go home. At least you're prepared and have a gameboy hiding in the car for such occasions
• The hypos when you burst into tears and cry about that day 9 years ago when your fish died, and how you really miss him
• Cold weather hypos
• Hot weather hypos
• Post-correction hypos
• Pig-out hypos, when the noms take over and all of a sudden you find yourself surrounded by empty chip and chocolate packets, with jam donut smeared over your forehead
• Multiple hypos