On being normal

"It's good that there's so much technology out there to help manage diabetes. You can still live a normal life."

Sure?

Well, for one thing, I've never lived a normal life, not even pre-diabetes, but I digress. Normal is what you make of it.

But honestly, life with diabetes is not normal. Diabetes is an invisible disease, only visible in its complications. It is not readily apparent that something is "wrong" with me. This does not mean that life with diabetes is easy.

One night before dinner, as I put the food on the table, my daughter and my husband started to eat. I went off to change my pump site. Then I wandered into the kitchen to test my blood sugar and record the results. Then I counted the carbs in my dinner and put all of that through the pump, which delivered the insulin. I was ready to eat. My husband was almost done.

I said, "Did you know that some people don't have to change their pump site and test their blood sugar before they eat?"
"Yes," he said. "They're on injections."
"No," I said. "People like you!"

The other day, I was thinking about what would happen if my daughter developed diabetes. Again, she can "live a normal life." But here's the thing: I don't want her to have to try to be normal.

I test upwards of ten times a day so that I can live a normal life. I plan every bit of eating and exercise I do throughout a day, and I move around a lot. This is hard. It's hard to think about everything you eat and every step you take throughout a day! I've even gone low at library story time, when we were doing a lot of bounces with the babies (it was right after breakfast, and I'd given myself a normal amount of insulin for the meal, never thinking that baby-bouncing would count as "exercise").

This normal life also has a toll on those around me. I forget that. I don't want to think about it.

My darling daughter appears quite healthy, so far. She enjoys playing with my old meter. She likes to have a "poke" and change her "site" when mama does.

Last night, I was making up some pretend test strips for her to put in her toy meter. She knew exactly where to put them, which makes sense, because she sees me do this umpteen times a day. I did a quick calculation and discovered that since my daughter was born, I've tested my blood sugar more than seven thousand times, likely approaching 8000. I thought that this was somewhat amusing, and it explained why my child whips out the test strips and inserts them in the meter like a pro.

I told this to my husband. His response was that he hated this damn disease and its impact on our lives. He ranted on for some minutes about this.

This is my normal life.