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Posts from the ‘Diabetes Memories’ Category

Apr 18

2 Comments

Looking Back: Diabetes Back in the Day.

This week is school vacation week for Birdzone, which means there’s plenty of Bird-watching and not a whole lot of inbox-management.  (Unless it’s after midnight … which is when all work-from-home happens … that’s normal, right?  So are these bags under my eyes, right?)  Which means that I might be re-visiting a few posts here and there.  Starting with today, and a look back at how diabetes has shown up in my diaries from years ago.

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Last night, I found a box of old diaries.  I’ve been keeping a paper journal since I was seven years old and I have so many hardcover journals with cats and flowers and balloons on them, my handwriting maturing as steadily and awkwardly as my content.

It’s strange, though, to see how little focus I put on diabetes in my previous journaling.  Most of my earlier journals (eight, ten years old at the time) talk about a boy I had a crush on in fourth grade or roller skating on the weekends or battling with my brother and sister.  But there were a few entries in particular that spoke to life with diabetes.  And while I’m not quite ready to recount the long, dramatic entry about my first kiss (gah!), I wanted to share snippets of my diabetes diary from my teenage years (these entries are from when I was 14 and 15):

May 13, 1993:  Beavis and Butthead is over.  It was strange, because they were in school and in home economics.  Their assignment was to carry around a back of sugar as a “baby.” But Butthead said he couldn’t do it because he was “diatetic.”  The teacher reprimanded him by saying, “That’s DIABETIC, and yes you can do this.”  I’m not exactly sure why, but that comment bothered me.  Alot.  I think it’s because I’m so sensitive about being a diabetic.  It makes me wonder how handicapped people feel about ‘HandyMan’ on In Living Color.  If I feel offended about an off-handed comment, how would someone else feel about a recurring segment?

Was this one of the first moments of diabetes in the mainstream media that I can remember?  I honestly can recall being affected by this, and wishing Butthead had said “diabetes” correctly.

June 27, 1994:  Today, my mother was talking with [name redacted] about diabetes camp and I couldn’t help but overhear.  She said, “As soon as Kerri left, we all relaxed and lead a normal two weeks free of worries and medical stuff.”  Am I a burden to my family?  Do they resent my diabetes?  Do I have a “normal” life?

This isn’t to call my mother out for saying this.  I’ve heard a lot of parents say the same thing about the weeks that their child is away at diabetes camp.  Diabetes requires parents to think on their feet all the time, so the reprieve of having their child away and under constant and capable medical care must have been such a nice break.

Funny – I’ve always wanted a break from it, too.

July 6, 1994:  I leave for Clara Barton Camp on Sunday.  I love camp.  We are all incredibly goofy and loved.  It is such a cool feeling to have people who understand it to talk to.  Sometimes I feel alienated at home because I am the only diabetic around.  No one seems to understand the emotions I feel concerning diabetes.  I am frustrated and angry sometimes, and other times I feel bad for myself.  Sometimes I even want sympathy, and that’s confusing because I say I don’t want to be treated differently at the same time.  It’s weird, though, because I want to be able to control every aspect of my health, so when my health emotions get all crazy, I feel like I’m going nuts.  At least at CBC I’m not the only one who feels that way.  If I tried explaining that to my friends, they’d look at me like I was nutso.

Ah, my longing for a diabetes community, even before I knew there would be one online.  🙂

And this paper was shoved into my diary from 1991, written on school paper and smelling softly of pencil boxes and recess.  It speaks volumes about how much a 12 year old kid grasps about guilt and diabetes:

A 12 yr old's diabetes to-do list.

It’s a lot to carry.  I felt so alone.  And as I read through these diaries late into last night, I was again grateful to know I’m not the only person out there living with this.  The power of this community is tremendous.  I also realized how everything has changed, but at the same time, nothing has changed.

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Diabetes Art Day: PWD Paper Dolls. 29 Years with Type 1 Diabetes. The Emerging Diabetes Online Community.

Feb 17

6 Comments

Ten Things About Things.

I do really hate those “Ten Things About Things” sort of posts, but in this case, I’ve screwed it up even more by intending to write a list of ten things, then realized I only included nine things.

Whoops.

This spring will mark eleven years of sharing my diabetes story on the Internet, and over the course of the last decade plus, there’s been a steep learning curve. Here are ten … um, nine things I’ve learned about diabetes and social media.

I wish one of those things had been to learn to count, but I’ll work on that.

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How Real Do You Want It? Drafting Off #DSMA: Diabetes Job Description. Looking Back: Of Cocktails and Community.

Feb 15

4 Comments

Looking Back: Cleaning Crews.

It’s weird to see that posts from 2011 are still relevant to how my diabetes behaves today.  See also:  when my blood sugar is tumbling, sometimes the dishes become a priority over a fistful of jellybeans.  Today, I’m looking back at a post from 2011 discussing that exact phenomenon, the urge to become a one-woman cleaning crew when under 65 mg/dL.

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The urge to clean grabs me by the throat, and I find myself spritzing Clorox on the counter and rubbing frantically with a fistful of paper towels.  Once that task is accomplished,  I notice that the floor just below the refrigerator door is sticky with juice or something, so I kneel down and scrub that, too.  And then suddenly the fridge door needs a scrub down, and I should probably grab all the sweet potatoes that are growing actual faces there on the back shelf and I think there’s a jar of minced garlic that’s spilled somewhere in there and …

… all while the Dexcom wails, shouting “LOW!!  KERRI!!  STOP FRIGGING CLEANING AND EAT SOMETHING!!!”

I look at the graph and see the double-down arrows, and confirm the low with my meter.  But it takes an awful lot of self-control to stop scrubbing and drink some grape juice.

Why am I struck with that urge to clean when I’m low?  I do not understand what it is about the Low Cleaning Crew that moves into my brain when the sugar apparently moves out, but they are a merry and manic mix of maids.  When my blood sugar is in the absolute trenches, I get these cleaning fits.  Emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, picking up the piles of Bird toys that little the floor … it’s like the slow ebbing of glucose from my blood stream makes my body feel so disorganized and rattled that I search and destroy all external messes to level the proverbial playing field.

(And I am clearly not alone in this affliction.  Scott posted about this the other day on Facebook, and the flood of comments was just enough to make my low blood sugar cleaning crews grab a mop.  This apparently happens to a lot of PWD … so explain why my house isn’t cleaner on a regular basis?)

Usually, it’s the beading of sweat on my forehead that makes me stop cleaning and acknowledge my blood sugar.  A lot of times, that cleaning fit comes with a frantically panicked mindset, where my brain is racing to think as many thoughts in as little time as possible, my hands shaking open a new garbage bag or sliding silverware into its place in the drawer organizer.

“Did you have a low?”  Chris asks, looking at the gleaming kitchen and the piles of folded clothes.

“How could you tell?”  I responded, wiping the glucose dust off the kitchen counter with a swipe of my sleeve.

“Wild guess.”

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Functionally Low. Memories. Looking Back: Telling Off the Paramedics.

Sep 14

1 Comment

Looking Back: Postcards from Eddie.

This morning, I thought about Eddie.  Eddie was the kid who I shared the hospital room with back when I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1986.  He popped into my head after I woke up, jet-lagged and confused from traveling yesterday, and watched a spider scuttle across the ceiling of this apartment.

Eddie had been bitten by a spider; I had been bitten by my immune system, after a fashion.

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Sometimes the only concrete proof that diabetes hasn’t been with me forever are the cards my classmates sent.  Made from Manila paper, the kind found in abundance in elementary school, the kids in my class used their Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils and a fistful of crayons to let me know they were thinking about me.

“Dear Kerri, I heard you were sick.  We cleaned out our desks yesterday.  You left your lunch here.  The pear was all rotten.  Hope you feel better soon.  – Mike.”  This card was illustrated in pencil, showing a skeleton picking up a spoiled bag lunch from the garbage can.

“Dear Kerri, Get well soon!  Love, Megan.”  A rainbow of three colors, – pink, blue, and purple – sprawled across the sky, represented by one line.  A tree with two apples hanging enormously from its branches stood exactly the same height as the building labeled “Hospitoll”.

These cards are safely packed away, somewhere at my dad’s house, with the pee alarm and the old blue comfort pillow that I used to clutch while I sucked my thumb.  My mother always claimed that she’d give me these things before my wedding day, a promise she followed through on when my husband and I married in 2008.

Even if I never see them again, I remember the cards.  I remember snippets of those years like they were postcards from someone else’s life.

A picture of the carousel near my childhood home brings back memories of black raspberry ice creams, riding my bike into the village with that Jack of hearts card stuck in the rear tire, and collecting the perfect, miniature shells that washed up on the shoreline after the hurricanes made their tour.  No memories of a finger stick or an injection.  But I do remember that, if I rode my bike all the way to the beach, I could have ice cream without taking a shot.

I don’t remember everything about my diagnosis.  They spoke mostly to my parents.  My dad paced the room and looked out the window.  My mom sat at the table with the endocrinologist, listening and taking notes.  Books on long and short acting insulin, a proposed diet, and a chart to log my blood sugars slid across the table.

I wasn’t paying too much attention to these attempts at education.  The 13 year old boy who shared my hospital room had been bitten by a poisonous spider and was hooked up to an IV drip bag that I found much more interesting.  The bite mark was an angry pink and the boy said it itched tremendously.  He and his IV pole and me with my Kitty sat in the children’s ward and watched television.  He introduced himself as Eddie.  I told him my name, too.

“What are you in for?”  He raked his fingers down the side of his ankle, where the bite waged war on his immune system.

“I have diabetes.”

“Oh.  I’ve got a spider bite.”

“Wow.  Can I see it?”

“Sure.”  He rolled up his pant leg and exposed the sore.  “Where’s yours?”

“I don’t have any marks on me,” I responded.  We watched TV while our parents talked to doctors.

In a box in my attic today, I found a postcard from Eddie.  We corresponded as pen pals for for several years.  I remember writing to him about cats and going to the beach, ice cream and bike rides, but never diabetes.

 

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Postcards from Eddie. Diabetes Advocacy Postcards. Bike Ride.

May 13

14 Comments

Diabetes Blog Week: Kicking It to the Curb.

When I was first hospitalized upon diagnosis, I spent two weeks in-patient learning the new and tangled ropes of type 1 diabetes with my parents.  My hospital roommate was a kid named Eddie, who had been bitten by a spider.  The other source of comfort was Kitty.

This grubby thing has been with me since the beginning.  My mom and dad let me pick him out at the toy store to before being admitted to the hospital, and this stuffed animal received as many paw pricks and injections as I did – albeit saline ones – during the course of those two weeks.  Kitty used to have long, fluffy “fur” that became matted and mangy from repeated snuggles.  He has a defined “waist” from me wrapping my little kid arms around him when my blood was being drawn.  You can’t entirely see his eyes, but they are in there, underneath the smushes of fur.

Chris and I moved into a new house a few months ago, and as we were packing, I had a few boxes designated as “important things.”  Those boxes weren’t put into the moving van but instead stayed in my car to keep them safest during the course of all the stuff shuffling.  One box was marked “DIABETES SUPPLIES” and in it I crammed my pump infusion sets, test strips, Dexcom sensors, etc.  And tucked neatly beside a spare glucose meter was Kitty, continuing to secure his VIP place in my diabetes supplies arsenal.

He used to live in my arms, when I was seven.  Then he moved to my shelf in college.  Now he lives in my closet, keeping watch from between boxes of Dexcom sensors.

He’s ancient.  Older than anything else I’ve ever owned.  Some people might think he’s due to be kicked to the curb, weeded out, tossed.

To this, I say, “No effing way.”  I’m planning on playing Uno with my grandkids several decades from now, with Kitty keeping watch from the closet where I’ll keep all my old lady accoutrements*.

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This is part of Diabetes Blog Week, where blog prompts help generate a series of posts by folks in the Diabetes Online Community.  Here’s today’s prompt:  “Yesterday we kept stuff in, so today let’s clear stuff out.  What is in your diabetic closet that needs to be cleaned out?  This can be an actual physical belonging, or it can be something you’re mentally or emotionally hanging on to.  Why are you keeping it and why do you need to get rid of it?  (Thank you Rick of RA Diabetes for this topic suggestion.)”

* Like giant pairs of underpants  UNDERPANTS!

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Diabetes Blog Week: The Quiet Parts. D-Blog Week: Change One Life, Change the World. Looking Back: Kitty.
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