moving forward

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the tender age of 7. I have spent most of my life fighting against the disease; hating it with every cell in my body. I get up each day with the same goals: test my blood sugar, take insulin, exercise, and eat something. I rarely reach these goals.

Up to this point I would not consider myself to manage the disease successfully. I know how; that's never been the issue. I am plagued by the need to be free and live a normal life and the knowledge that I can never be entirely free due to diabetes. I have tried to ignore my diabetes with the hope that I would enjoy my life more, that has been a futile attempt at happiness and freedom. The consequences of not managing the disease have begun to out weigh the benefit of ignoring it. There were times that I forgot I had diabetes because I would go so long without checking my blood sugar or giving insulin. I won't deny that in some ways that was really nice. It was nice to feel normal, but something clawed at the back of my mind. A thought that turned into a monster. The thought that despite my feeling of freedom I was not truly free. The thought that one day the bad decisions would catch up with me and I would have to face the truth--- I have diabetes.

My path with diabetes is moving in a new direction. For the past two years, I have been seeking better medical advice and going a little further in my journey to live with diabetes and accept it.

I need an outlet. I need a place where I can talk about the daily struggle I have with diabetes. One might think that it's easy to talk about the hard decisions and circumstances that accompany this disease, but that's not quite the case for many reasons. People in the world do not understand the difficulty in managing diabetes and they don't have compassion for people who do not manage it well (for the most part). It seems simple enough, I'm sure, from an outsiders perspective, but it's not. Imagine being given a range of numbers to keep your body in everyday. The number itself is affected by 100 + variables: exercise, hormones, stress, insulin injection site, temperature, sleep, hydration, food, type of food, human error, depression, excitement....anything in the world you can think of probably effects this number. The number is used to judge you. You are either a good diabetic or a bad diabetic or somewhere in the middle. You will often hear "oh, that's a good number, good job....or oooh no, that's a bad, number we have to do something about this." There is never a day that is like the day before. The numbers always change. If did exactly the same thing as I did the day before....I mean like in an extreme situation where I could mimic everything I did....the numbers would still be different.

The nature of the disease and the social misunderstanding of it, make it incredibly difficult to manage. Not impossible, but really hard.

Okay, so now that I've established the difficulty. I will say that I am attempting to live my life and do everything I dream of, as well as manage diabetes. I should preface that I have an incredible team of doctors and nurses and support. Otherwise, there would be no way for me to achieve my goals.

To revamp my efforts towards control, I will going from an insulin pump to injections this week. I am nervous about the transition. I have been on my pump for over 6 years, but I know I need a change. I have formed bad habits with the insulin pump and I haven't been able to break these habits.

Today: I have given insulin and taken my blood sugars. I'm proud of this fact. I have messaged my nurse the numbers. So far so good.