Happy (?) World Diabetes Day

Blood glucose: 11.4mmol/l (205mg/dl)

Another year, another pseudo-celebration. It feels somewhat like my D-anniversary, to me. Bittersweet. I'm still happy and I'm still healthy, but I still have to deal with diabetes and its challenges every single day. No matter how much I am living, how well I am doing, how good my A1C is, how healthy I am, how happy I am... Nothing can ever take that away from me. However "good" control I am in, I still need to test upwards of 15 times on a lot of days. It's very rare for me to test less than 10 times a day. I usually have to do something, whether it's changing out insulin, tubing or infusion set, every day, which is time consuming.

I can't go out and get drunk or go into town without taking a bag with me or just go to sleep and forget about everything. I can't just skip a meal without the constant nagging question of "are my basals right? Can I actually go without this meal?". I can't lie in bed past 10AM without my parents starting to worry. Am I just being a teenager, or am I low? Have I not woken up, this time? Could I be high? Maybe my infusion set has been pulled out in the middle of the night.

I have to decide every night, whether I am going to set an alarm and disturb my sleep up to 3 times, to allow me to run as low as I would like (4-6mmol/l (72-108mg/dl)), or whether I am going to allow myself to run higher (7-10mmol/l (126-180)) and let myself sleep for longer than 6 hours at a stretch. I'm seventeen years old and I have to make a choice whether for tonight I want to have some decent sleep, or decent BG numbers. I have to decide whether the risks of future complications from running high all night outweigh the risks of waking up at 20-30mg/dl at 1AM. I just don't feel old enough for this, a lot of the time. And yet, I've been doing it since I was 14. And the parents of all children with diabetes have to make these decisions too (about their own children - whose lives are likely far more precious to them than my own life is to me) every single day. We don't get a break. Diabetes never sleeps. We take it with us when we go to school, when we go out, and when we go on vacation. Nothing will ever be simple again, until we have a cure.

We all still deal with every day as it comes. I have 100% attendance at school, and I plan to keep it that way. I'm not sick all the time (even if a simple flu diagnosis does frequently lead to hospitalisation in children and adults with type 1 diabetes, I have been lucky enough to escape any serious illness so far). I still go out (even if sometimes my blood glucose falls to below 2.2 (40) and I have to sit down and eat something and struggle to keep conscious and talking). I still have hopes, and dreams, and future plans. I still have love, and my religion. Diabetes will never take that away from me. Diabetes will never take the majority of what I have away from me.

But I would be lying if I pretended that it has taken nothing away from me, and I would be lying if I pretended I am still the same person as I would be had I not got diabetes.