Sometimes, I see things and I think they are a wonderful visual representation of diabetes, like the game Perfection. And this pot.
My blood sugars are a heavy pot of boiling water. A rolling boil, the ones where you look at the water and see the bubbles coming up like predictable and methodical pewter poetry. Scary if I were to reach in, but when I watch the patterns and take care to keep it from boiling over or evaporating away, it’s okay. Instead, I hold it by its uncomfortable handles, oven mitts of education and access and privilege on my hands, finding balance oh so very carefully.
I hold that pot. Every day. And make sure I don’t get burned.
And somehow? All of us? We make it work.
The Facebook page I found this image on is called The Uncomfortable. Click over and take a look at the designs. They are aptly named.
It is amazing that we do make it. Yet we do. I mean who would have said, give average people a dangerous medication that they inject everyday and guess what, most of them will do very well. I mean who does that. Yet we do and even better when we say how many do we lose each day? Damn few if any. It is an amazing thing.
[…] the subtleties of my support network that help to keep diabetes as the awkward pot on the back burner. It’s my mother who checks in when my husband is traveling to make sure I’m doing fine. […]
[…] Being a mom with type 1 diabetes isn’t something I think about often because, on the average, run-of-the-mill day, diabetes doesn’t influence the way I mom. (And as the mother of two very active kids, “to mom” is definitely a verb. We don’t sit still very often.) Being pregnant with type 1 diabetes was very intense and on the forefront and dominated that experience, but after the kids were born, diabetes came off the front burner and went back to being that awkward pot on the back. […]