Rant About Diabetes….Consider Yourself Warned

I started following this Diabetic Support group on Facebook. I had hoped that it would help encourage me to get my diabetes under control. Unfortunately it seems to be failing me. They post articles about the newest in diabetic care and tutorial videos about how you can make living with diabetes “easier” on yourself and your family. Which is discouraging, because in order to make it easier on your family and yourself one has to be willing to admit that it is difficult already. Which it is easy to admit it is difficult for yourself, but to admit it puts strain on family and loved ones is much more painful.

What is even more discouraging are some of the comments on these posts. Some are optimistic and hopeful…yet they also lie in the midst of other comments, such as “that never worked for me,” and “who seriously has time for that,” strew throughout the thread. Thoughts that have always been very much my own on many of the suggestions.

On my days off of work it is easy. It’s easy to remember that I’m a diabetic. It’s easy to remember to take a blood sugar when I get up, because I don’t have to worry about putting on my makeup after I slept in a few minutes too many. It’s easy to control what I eat when I’m not forgetting to leave time to make myself lunch and not buying a pop tart out of the snack machine for lunch, or running to Dairy Queen across the street. It’s easier when I’m not so tired and achy from everything to get out of bed as the alarm goes off because I actually had a good nights sleep for once. It’s easy to not be stressed out and have it affect my blood sugars. It’s all easier.

But then again, it’s never actually easy.

I unfollowed the group recently. I couldn’t handle that sense of hope being taken from me by a bunch of internet trolls. I could watch the success stories wondering why it didn’t happen that way for me. I couldn’t handle the responsibility of knowing what I should be doing, but finding myself so defeated that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

It feels like failure. All of it.

When I was young it wasn’t so bad. I had to do things so I didn’t die. I was afraid and that fear kept me going. Even if it didn’t work for me, I did everything like my doctor said to. No excuses. I got accused once of not doing it right by a doctor, who was convinced that I wasn’t taking my shots when I was thirteen. It wasn’t until then that I began to feel discouraged and defeated. If the doctors couldn’t help me, who could? Certainly I couldn’t do it by myself.

So I gave up. In college. When I didn’t have to run to the nurse, and the secretaries wouldn’t call my parents if they didn’t see me come to take my insulin shot in the office. Right after I got an insulin pump. When I was old enough to decide if I wanted to keep doing this or not. I began to give up. To stop. To pretend I was like the rest of my friends who could eat and do whatever they wanted. Forgetting became easier.

With the recent Ebola scare, the negative impact I have personally had on my own health has become even more painful. My last doctors visit, I was informed that I had done enough damage that my immune system was almost that of an AIDS victim. I was hardly going to be able to fight off the flu without a flu shot, much less be able to protect myself from anything worse. I work in a very public occupation. You come into contact with a lot of people in a very short amount of time. I have been, and continue to be, sick much of the time. Colds thankfully, but no less enough to mess with my glucose levels and make me feel much worse.

Unfortunately when you work retail, taking days off isn’t going to be easy. In fact it’s nearly impossible. If you do take a day off, managers have an uncanny way of making you feel as though having health issues puts your job at risk…like you might be fired for it. So you come to work sick. A lot. Hoping that you don’t get worse from already having a compromised immune system. Hoping you don’t get anyone else sick.

Now I’m trying to undo several years of damage, and it’s the worst feeling of failure of all.