Sunday, April 10, 2011

Post Secret

Sunday's prompt from the WEGO Health Blog is to write down a secret that really isn't a secret, a la Post Secret.

I'm not going to re-do what was already done so poignantly here on Kerri's blog.

The outpouring of honesty in the anonymous comments to her post kept me coming back to see what the next revelation would be. I didn't post anything myself. I don't know what my secret about diabetes would be, honestly. Maybe I haven't thought about it enough? Maybe I am already too open with people about my condition.

I think it's no secret that I hate and resent diabetes, but that I deal with it and don't let it win. I don't let it affect my relationships, my success, my career…most of the time. I like the phrase coined by one of my online DOC friends: "I'm fine, except when I'm not."

It's no secret that I don't believe in a cure. It's hard to tell the newly diagnosed that I'm in that camp, but I am careful with how I say it and I like to think it's my right to be skeptical...in more than just that respect.

And I've been honest with my community when I've had misconceptions about Type 2 diabetes - and I've apologized for them (and you probably should, too).

Maybe my post secret would be that I'm complacent. I should have complications by now, but I don't, so I take for granted that my body must be resilient.

I think my body has to be exhausted…but who has the time to stop and pamper it? There are students to teach, gigs to sing, a house to clean, children to care for, blogs to write.

My blood sugar is 335 tonight as I post this. It was 168 and stable five hours ago when I laid down with my kiddo for a minute. I know why it's high though - I ate BBQ at 6:30 and the fat content caught up with me. Had I not fallen asleep at 8:30, I'd have caught it at 9 when it started to skyrocket. Instead, my poor little cells have been swimming in glucose for the last few hours. My little cgm beeping its heart out while I slept through it.

335 makes you feel sick to your stomach, thirsty but you can't drink enough to put a dent in your thirst, angry - chemically so - at nothing because your stress hormones are peaking, sleepy.

335 feels like a piece of cotton in your mouth. Edgy like a junkyard dog at the end of a chain. In a thunderstorm. Heavy with sleep.

Post Secret #2: I don't know how I spent most of my teen and young adult years with 335s everyday. I don't know how I performed in shows, aced exams, loved and lost….with 335s everyday.

And I have to wonder what I would have achieved if I had known then what I know now.

So that 335s are an anomaly rather than an inevitability.

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