Wrangler Dani

Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetics are not the same thing. Sure, there are exceptions, but the vast majority of diabetics are that way either because of advanced age or life choices they made – they ate poorly or ignored warning signs or allowed their weight to get out of control, and they are living with the consequences. I’m a diabetic because an unfortunate roll of the dice meant my pancreas stopped working as a teenager. I’m not overweight, unhealthy or sedentary. I’m not old or under any illusions about how many Milky Way bars I can eat in one day. It’s just the way it is.

Every time I go to the doctor, I want to scream, “I’m 29!” as they shuffle me through elderly question after elderly question. I’ve just spent an hour in the waiting room where the median age is 65 and the median weight is 300 (sing it with me, one of these things is not like the other) and now you’re lecturing me about the “dangers” of wearing flip-flops and the necessity of using a diabetic cookbook.

When I leave the doctor’s office, I encounter more landmines, as good-natured acquaintances try to “help” me by telling me what I can and can’t eat. “We could meet at Starbucks? Oh wait, you can’t have that…” they say, blowing right by my insistence that I’ve lived with this disease for quite a long time now, and I’m fairly sure I can make a healthy choice at the most common meeting place of the 21st century.

So, this is why I don’t talk about it. It’s a hassle, an embarrassment, an inconvenience, and I’m not willing to let it rule my life more than it already does. At least one day a week I wake up exhausted by having to think about how many units of insulin to take, annoyed that I have to make yet another trip to the pharmacy or just tired of thinking through every food choice, mood change, exercise level or outside temperature, because, yes, all of this effects my blood-sugar, and yes, it’s as tiring as it sounds. I can’t go for a hike or a paddle without a backpack of insulin and snacks, my purse is the size of a small child for the same reason, and sometimes I just want to cry from frustration and exhaustion.

I know I need to be grateful – if I’d been born 50 years earlier I’d have been dead at 15 – but sometimes all I want is to have someone understand how it feels to be young, healthy, adventurous and yet tied down to something that can be so hard to live with. The hope of pregnancy and having my own kids have even been sacrificed to its unrelenting hunger, and while, yes, I’ll keep fighting and working and trying – sometimes I’m just tired of fighting. My whole life is a fight – a fight to stay healthy, to stay normal, to save my kidneys and my eyesight and every other bodily function that everybody loves to tell me is headed for the rocks at any moment.

Why am I writing this? I don’t really know, other than I never have before and I’m hoping it’s cathartic rather than terrifying. I guess I’m also writing because you probably know someone – me or someone else – who lives with diabetes or something similar – who wants you to be their friend, not their doctor. Ask questions, be sympathetic, offer hugs and help, but don’t mother me. Let me make the choices I make every day, and if you want to know why or how, don’t be afraid to ask and listen. Don’t jump to conclusions or tell me that your grandmother was also a diabetic so you know all about it – every story is different and everyone lives with disease in a different way.

I guess I’m telling you this, because, as I said, I don’t talk about it because I don’t want it to rule my life, but I don’t want my reticence to rule me, either. Does that make sense? Anyway, if you’re still here, thanks for listening.