So, what’s it LIKE having diabetes?

People seem to really want to know, but the answer is that nobody ever could until they’ve tried it. And it’s not just about the cringing as you press the button to release the lancet, and the tingly pain as you try to squeeze more blood out of your fingers, calloused already from many years of playing the guitar, and many weeks of blood testing, or the faint pop as you push the needle into your thigh, or your tummy. The sharp noise you make as you suck in the air through your teeth when you hit a nerve. Someone without diabetes could inject themselves with saline, could test their blood as many times as they want, but they still don’t know what it’s like. They don’t know what it feels like to go out with friends to eat and for them to look away as you jab yourself. But still HAVE to do it.

They just don’t know the five seconds that drags on seeming like hours, as you wait for the verdict of your blood result. Should I not have had that last piece of pizza? They don’t know the headache that comes on when you’re high, the feeling of a ton of bricks inside your forehead, dragging it down further and further. Or the huge thirst, the necessity to down pints and pints of water.

Last night I had two friends over. We had a great time, but it had never clicked that other people didn’t know how it felt to have high blood sugar. They were shocked that as we were chatting at 2 o’clock in the morning my blood sugar was about 13, and I had to pee every 15 minutes. They’d never felt that. And as we chatted I drunk water, I felt better. I managed to get down to 11 before going to sleep. But it doesn’t even matter. What matters is that I have to do it and everyone around me has to live with it too. I have to live with it, my family have to live with it, my friends now also have to live with it. And I don’t care if people turn away when I pierce my skin, to inject the insulin that stops me being sick. I’m not sick when I have my insulin. I’m not ill. I’m just a normal person, who has to take a  medication, to keep their levels of a certain hormone up. What’s different about my insulin and Ellie’s iron tablets? Nothing.

 My meter doesn’t read “HI” anymore. That’s what it did when I was admitted to the children’s ward on 06-07-07. The day before yesterday all my results were between 4 and 10. That’s a big acheivement for me.

I was reading Kerri’s blog about this being our normal now and it made me think about how it’s not just “our normal”. Everybody around us has to accept it as normal as well. I’m so glad that most of my friends, with the exception of a couple, really get it. I can still do everything I used to so. I can still laugh about Ellie thinking Per Una is a type of fish. “WAIT, NO, THAT’S A PIRANA!” I can still eat pizza. My friends can still bring me back chocolate from France. The only difference is that the packet now says “sans sucre”. I can still laugh at me and Sophie singing Baby Got Back on singstar. We can still take weird pictures of ourselves on my and Ellie’s camera. We can still dissect Ferrous Sulphate tablets.

And in the pictures you could never tell that one of us has diabetes.