Diabetes: My Survival Story

Chapter 5: The Looks

Anywhere I go anymore people stare at me. Whether they are starring at my pump, my bag with the testing supplies in it, or when I was younger the scaring on my arms.

It's not as noticeable now, but when I had to take up to 5 shots a day. I had a lot of scaring on my arms. I bet most of them thought I took drugs. We'll, I guess insulin is a drug? But it's a good drug, so it balances out. xD

Especially when I go out to eat at restaurant. I haven't had anybody else ask so rudely like the waitress, but people still ask,

"What's that?"

And I just answer them with the clearest answer possible. I'm a diabetic. Then they either have a scared look on there face like I'm the disease ready to kill them, or they turn to my mom and say,

"I'm so sorry."

My parents usually go ugh, because they've heard it enough times it's not like I'm in a hospital bed all day waiting for death to come knocking. I'm just as weird as you are, but with a side effect if you would call it.

It most certainly gets annoying when people go,

"Does it hurt?"

Hm let me see. Does it hurt when I shove a needle into the side of your finger, and you watch blood pour out of it? Hm does it?

At first it did hurt like hell, but after the many years my fingers have pretty much died so I don't feel it anymore. And when I occasionally do, I just shrug because I've felt it enough that it doesn't surprise me. Most pain doesn't hurt me. I've felt it all.

What's also annoying is having to carry around this huge bag full of my supplies to test. The tester itself, and the supplies needed to test isn't much. But the other stuff needed to have with me in case of a emergency is a lot.

I have to carry glucose tablets, which is basically a chalky tasting tablet that brings my sugar up fast.

A glucose pen, which is just a shot filled with plain glucose that can be used if I'm past out or unable to chew the tablets. Someone can just shove that into my leg and I'll be ok. Eventually.

Some restaurants have a Nutrition Information paper on some of their foods. (Example: Eat-N-Park, Red Robin, Dairy Queen...) So I keep those in there. It helps me. Instead of doing the calculation over and over and over again. I can just look through the papers and find it.

There is also a book/now website called Calorie King, and it contains a lot of nutrient facts from restaurants and different foods. So if the restaurant itself doesn't have the info, I can go through the book or website and find it.

I keep snacks in there in case of a low, or if I'm just hungry. I also keep juice boxes when I'm really tired if the chalky crappy tablets. In all honesty, the tablets taste awful and just a little part of you on the inside dies every time you eat one. Never eat one unless it's an emergency. Thank god I don't have too many emergencies.

And just sometimes my family likes to throw in extra crap, just so I can carry more weight. Sometimes I swear the bag weighs more than me.

So unless you have never seen me before, just imagines Santa's sack of toys and multiply that sack by 3 and it should be close to what it looks like.

Like I said earlier people have gone up to me and ask the stupidest questions like the pregnant one. I've heard it all, and I'm pretty sure soon it's gonna start repeating to where I can have a stamp and stamp the answer on their forehead.

Hurray for me.