D-Blog Week: What Brings Me Down & What Keeps Me Up

Today, the theme for Diabetes Blog Week posts is 'what brings me down'.  Talking about the moments, days and, for some, weeks when diabetes is making you want to scream, cry or hide away is really important.

During the majority of my teenage years, I went through a lot of times when I would completely ignore my diabetes and never talk about it.  There would be many meals eaten which I wouldn't give any insulin for and my body would be flooded with ketones.  There were whole days when I wouldn't test my blood sugars at all.  At one point, my HbA1c hit 12%.  I wasn't in contact with anyone else with type 1 diabetes, and I attempted to deal with that by pretending that I didn't have it either.

Things only began to change when I started blogging 3 years ago and I attended a DAFNE course.  I finally felt like I was surrounded by others who understood exactly what I was going through.  Most of the time nowadays, the reasons why I'm irritated by diabetes are because I'm putting all my effort into looking after myself, and sometimes what I see on my glucose meter doesn't reflect that.  For me, however, this is a better result than the exhaustion and illness I suffered when I paid no attention to my diabetes at all.  At least now, when I'm feeling down about it, it shows that I care about my health.

There are numerous aspects of diabetes that get to me, for example like when I'm covered in bruises from injections, or my blood sugars seem to make no sense at all.  There will probably always be times when diabetes will try to get the better of me but, when it does, I know where to come.  So thank you to the Diabetes Online Community - you have been crucial to my physical and mental health.  Because of you guys, I know that whatever aspect of diabetes is bringing me down, I'm not alone. 

:)

D-Blog Week: The Positive Diabetes Poem

The prompt for today's post is to write a poem about diabetes.  In 2012 I wrote a poem for the 'Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge' called Bad Diabetes Day, which I loved writing!  I'm always excited about opportunities to do something a bit creative and different, so I really enjoyed writing this one too:

The Positive Diabetes Poem

As a little girl I'd never tell,

That I had type 1 D.

I was worried what people might say,

And what they would think of me.

Did her parents feed her too much sugar?

Did she used to be fat?

I was embarrassed of my diabetes,

Didn't want to answer questions like that.

I just wanted to be normal,

Eat whatever I liked for tea,

Not have to think about my blood sugars,

Be injection and blood test free.

But as I got older I realised,

No one can be blamed.

I didn't 'make' myself diabetic,

I shouldn't feel ashamed.

Sometimes bad things happen,

But they make you who you are.

Focusing on the positives

Can get you really far!

Now when I inject in public,

Where other people might be sat,

I remind myself I have diabetes,

And there's nothing wrong with that!