For a long time, the diabetes world has been challenged to agree on a color/symbol. Are we represented by a blue ribbon or a blue circle? Are we represented by a gray or silver ribbon with a red dot or a red drop of blood? Are we represented by red because it’s the color of blood and the ADA? Only a couple of years back, I saw an online poll soliciting suggestions and votes for a color to represent diabetes. There were votes for yellow, some for teal, some for lime green, a few for the rainbow. I shook my head wondering how we were ever going to accomplish what pink has been for breast cancer because, while it has its faults – pink KFC buckets are always a great example of how pink has gone a step too far – the diabetes awareness effort needs to aspire to that level of recognition.

Raising awareness is very much about public relations, and marketing a busted pancreas in November after everyone has been smothered in boobies and drenched in pink during October is not exactly an ideal position to be in. That’s a challenge for us, but it doesn’t change the fact that diabetes needs more love and recognition than it’s historically received, especially because it affects and kills a lot more people.

In an effort to be more widely recognized, over the last year, the DOC has adopted the blue circle, as evidenced by the support of initiatives like Blue Fridays and the Blue Heel Society, but only a year ago, there were still lingering doubts about how the DOC could symbolically represent itself in an easily identifiable way that would raise awareness for diabetes. Last year at the Roche Diabetes Summit, we broke into small groups to discuss issues and strategies relevant to the larger diabetes community, and one of the issues we addressed was how to resolve the color/symbol issue.

I advocated for the blue circle. I’ve been a fan of it since I started participating in World Diabetes Day a few years ago. It’s simple, and it’s different from a ribbon which sets it apart. I like that it represents unity and the community of people affected by diabetes around the world. I like that it has global power because it originates from the International Diabetes Federation. That was only a small part of the Diabetes Summit, but I believed the color/symbol problem was one we could do something about, and I appreciated that Roche structured the time so we could have small group discussions, in person, about this and other issues relevant to the DOC and the larger diabetes community.

The summit ended. I came home. The details of the color/symbol discussion faded, but the overarching idea that we needed to use the blue circle and advocate for its use by the broader community stayed with me. Incubating. Stewing. Percolating. Summer passed. Fall was upon us. Diabetes Awareness Month and World Diabetes Day were fast approaching. I wanted to do something meaningful with the blue circle that allowed for wide participation. Then the idea came to me, the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange, an idea that emerged from that opportunity to gather around a table with other diabetes advocates to flesh out the color/symbol problem and how to address it in a way that benefited the entire community.

Except for the first year when I was spazzy excited just to meet so many people from the diabetes social media realm, and frankly, shocked that I was even invited, I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned something substantial here about my participation in the Roche Diabetes Summits. There were a lot of hurt feelings in the DOC that first year, and ever since, there seems to be negative energy about these kinds of events in the online space because of the inclusion of a few and exclusion of many. I get that. I feel fortunate to get invited to some things, but I don’t get invited to everything. Logically, I understand that companies and organizations have valid reasons for inviting some, but not others. I also know being excluded doesn’t feel good, especially when you believe you have something unique and valuable to contribute, and ultimately, I think we all have something to contribute because no one’s experience with diabetes is any more or less valid than another person’s. Understanding that people’s feelings get hurt has made me reluctant to share much about the events I attend, so for the most part, I’ve chosen not to blog about it.

Another reason I haven’t blogged about Roche – or Medtronic – is because nearly everyone else who attends writes a synopsis, and anything I could add would be redundant. I don’t want to be redundant, which has a lot to do with why I only blog on occasion. I figure one of the reasons I don’t get invited to some events is because I don’t blog very often, but most days, I don’t have anything to say that is worth clogging your Google Reader. I don’t just want to be a part of the conversation; I want to add something valuable to the conversation. In the spirit of conversing, I certainly like when people read and offer comments, but that’s more of a bonus than the end goal for me.

Despite my sporadic blogging and practically defunct Twitter account (sorry, I got bored and it’s too much effort to keep up), I was invited to Roche again this year. Like the last three years, you likely won’t get a recap from me because I know my peers will do it better justice than I would. Just because I don’t post a report or blog much at all, doesn’t mean I’m a seat warmer with a familiar face, invited simply because I’ve been invited every year. Thankfully, blogging and tweeting aren’t the only ways to measure activism, success, dedication, and investment in diabetes social media. Blogging gave me a good running start, but I needed to stop just talking about what I wanted to do, and actually do it, so I’ve worked to find ways to combine art and diabetes to help people, build community, and raise awareness, including Diabetes Art Day, the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange, as well as multiple offline endeavors like the Diabetes Art Studio I’ll be facilitating at the Children With Diabetes Friends For Life Conference in a couple of weeks.

More and more, I don’t think the “blogger” label applies to me because that’s not my focus. It doesn’t capture what I contribute or describe my role in diabetes advocacy. I enjoy crafting something with language that people want to read, but art is my first love. Art is the universal language, and I think art and other forms of non-verbal creative expression are a grossly untapped resource for the global diabetes community. I’m going to do everything I can to facilitate harnessing the power of art to make a better world for people with diabetes, and attending the Roche Summits helps me do that. When we talk about who brings what to the proverbial table, that is what I bring.

Maybe you’ve been to the Roche Summit, maybe you haven’t, but regardless, if you participated in Diabetes Art Day or the Postcard Exchange, or even if you’ve visited the website or Facebook page of either to see what people have created, you have benefited from the Roche Diabetes Summit because Diabetes Art Day and the Postcard Exchange emerged from it. My hope is that attending the Roche Summit will again lead to collaborative creativity that expresses something about diabetes that can’t be written or said. I have big ideas for my next diabetes art initiative, ideas that require resources I don’t have, ideas that are meant to benefit all of us, and my promise to you is that I’ll use my participation at the Roche Diabetes Summit to promote and develop art initiatives that aren’t just for the short list of attendees, but for everyone.

The first time I signed up for a blogging event, one that stipulated I blog every day for a month, I succeeded. Since then though, every time I sign up for any sort of blog-everyday-for-however-long event, things unravel quickly. Most recently, and most lamely, I signed up for WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge in April, and completed a total of zero posts. I knew going into it that I wouldn’t be able to blog every day, but I had thought I could at least do a few days. Not impressive, I know, unless you’re impressed by complete hang-my-head-in-shame failure.

Blogging everyday for a month is clearly not for me, but blogging every day for a week is something I think I can manage, and potentially accomplish, so I signed up for the 3rd annual D-Blog Week, which starts today. D-Blog Week is organized by my dear DOC friend, Karen at Bitter-Sweet Diabetes. I love to support my DOC buddies (especially Karen!), and I love how D-Blog Week is a great opportunity to connect and share above and beyond the usual DOC activity.

Today’s prompt is as follows:

It seems the most popular thing about Diabetes Blog Week is that it helps us find blogs we weren’t reading yet and connect with some new blog friends. With that in mind, let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by making some new connections. Think about the d-blogs you read that you think we may not know about and introduce us to one that you love!! Let’s all find a new friend today!

Needless to say, one of the reasons I haven’t been completing blogging events is that I don’t blog much anymore. I’ve transitioned the focus of my online diabetes advocacy work to Diabetes Art Day and the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange, partly because I don’t have much to say anymore that I haven’t already said, and partly because I think those are more unique ways I can contribute to the DOC. I like having this space to write an occasional post when I feel inspired though, as I did yesterday, but I can’t do this regularly anymore, and won’t even pretend otherwise. I’m really grateful that some people still like to pop by and read when I do post though because even though I don’t say much here, it’s nice that people are still willing to listen.

Unfortunately, my D-blog reading has become almost as disappointing as my D-blog writing. In my experience, twitter is the best way to discover new blogs, but my tweet action is sporadic. I join #dsma chats when I’m able, but it’s very infrequent that I pop on just to tweet it up. What can I say? Twitter is a lot of work, and when I used it effectively, if you want to call it that, it was a massive time sink. I simply can’t do that anymore which means I’m not “meeting” new DOC’ers like I once did, and I’m not discovering new D-blogs.

I’m not even good at staying on top of the blogs I used to read regularly. My system for blog-reading these days generally relies on people posting links on Facebook. If there’s a link to a blog post in my newsfeed that catches my eye, I’ll go read it. I know it means I miss a lot of great blogs, so it’s far from perfect, but my “Facebook system” works for me better than driving myself nuts trying to read every single diabetes blog. As you can imagine though, my system is not especially conducive to finding new blogs.

So it comes down to this. I don’t have a diabetes blog friend to share with you, at least not one you don’t already know. Maybe I’ll discover some this year as a result of D-Blog Week that I’ll be able to share with you next year. For now, I’m going to go a little rogue, and share some fun art-making blogs with you. I know that’s not the assignment, but perhaps you’ll find some inspiration there, inspiration that you can use to help you with your Diabetes Art Day project or your World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange postcard (it’s never too early to start!). If you ever have the opportunity to do creative projects with kids, maybe you’ll find some ideas to have a fun art-a-palooza. Maybe you’ll get inspired to do something creative just for the sake of your own personal creative growth. Maybe you’ll have a diabetes-themed spark of creativity that you’ll share with me so I don’t feel quite so terrible about taking liberties with the D-Blog Week prompt today.

PaintCutPaste and PaintCutPaste on Facebook:
A super neat website by an art therapist and mom who shares art projects that are fun for kids and adults. From her site:

“my initial goal for this site is to share with parents, caregivers, and teachers various ideas for creative activities to do with kids. as this blog grows, it expands to include ideas to nurture the creative drive that lives within each of us, as well… our kids help us to remember how much fun playing with art can be, and sometimes it’s fun to take your turn with the paintbrush or sewing needles! i hope this site brings you and yours inspiration and plenty of beautiful paint cut paste messes!”

Art Journaling as a Creative Process and Art Journaling as a Creative Process on Facebook:
This site hasn’t been updated in about 6 months, but the posts conveying the benefits and describing techniques of art journaling are timeless. Have a look through the archive, and discover the true magic of this art form. I love this site, and offer it as a resource to the students in my Intro to Art Therapy course, so now I suggest it to you too. As a bonus, most of the techniques are very adaptable to postcard-making… just sayin’…

This post is in response to the following prompt provided by the WEGO Health National Health Blog Posting Month:

5 things that changed my life. For better? For worse? List 5 things that changed your life as a patient, caregiver, or Health Activist and how.

Eating Disorder & Depression: On the surface, I suppose this looks like one of the things that changed my life for the worse, and in many respects, I’d say that’s true. I didn’t do my health and my body any favors, and I destroyed, maimed, or temporarily soured more than a few relationships along the way because I couldn’t figure out how to manage my mental health. As far as the depression goes, I manage it as proactively as I can, and that seems to keep it from being a disruption to my life. As for the eating disorder, I overcame it, and I’m a better, stronger person for it. I have tremendous faith in my ability to overcome the seemingly impossible, and I have an appreciation for health, both physical and mental, that only those who’ve been down a dark road that has neither of those things, can know.

Insulin Pump: I was on injections for 26 years. I started with a single injection of NPH and Regular before eventually going to two injections a day, to three, to more, to Humulin N and R, to Lantus and R. Finally, in 2004, after having had the pump suggested to me by endocrinologists for several years, I decided to go for it because I thought it could help me better manage my diabetes. I admit the adjustment was a little difficult because pump or no pump, my management left a lot to be desired, but eventually I got to the point where the diabetes was coming together, and I loved my pump. Sometimes it’s a pain to be attached, and site changes are always a chore, but overall, my BG management is better than it’s ever been, and I love the flexibility it affords. I have never regretted the choice to pump insulin.

Carb Counting: When I was a kid, the exchange diet was standard diabetes management protocol, and I was comfortable with it. In my mid 20’s I was introduced at carb counting, but that was a disaster. It made me obsess over what I was eating and how many carbs were in everything, which during a few short months of being eating disorder-free, became my total undoing. Seven years later when I decided I was ready for an insulin pump because I wanted to get my diabetes on the right track, it was time for me to revisit carb counting. I struggled for some time with it, partly because I was still struggling with my eating issues, but eventually I conquered my self-destructive behavior, and found a way to make carb counting work for me. Today, I have a pretty healthy relationship with food considering diabetes makes that nearly impossible. I’ve learned to eat the things I like, both the healthy food and the food that has questionable nutritional value, because I believe in balance, moderation, and not depriving myself of the foods I enjoy. It’s important that I feel like nothing is off-limits, and carb counting offers that for me. It’s a delicate equilibrium, but I’ve achieved it, which has made a world of difference in my physical health and my mental health. Considering how diabetes makes food so complicated, I don’t think I could ask for much more than that.

The DOC: The DOC, before I knew that’s what it was even called, helped save me from myself. Once upon a time, before blogging, TuDiabetes, or Diabetes Daily, I experimented with diabetes groups and listservs, but never really got much from it. In 2004 when I was working with at-risk kids, I made a myspace account to snoop on the activity of the kids on my caseload. I started poking around for myself though, and discovered a discussion group for people with diabetes to connect. When I started using that group, I was still struggling with my eating disorder, but I found I wanted to help people with diabetes more than I wanted to be the person with diabetes who needed help. So I did what I needed to do to defeat my demons in order to be the person I wanted to be: blogger, health activist, and art therapist for people with diabetes. The DOC has been good to me, and I live to return the favor whenever I have the opportunity.

Jason: I wish I could say I got my shit together because I wanted to be healthy for me. I like to think I was at least headed in that direction, but whether or not that’s how things would have gone if I hadn’t met Jason is anyone’s guess. While we were dating, I started to get back on track, but it was a lot of two steps forward, one step back. Once we were married, it became clear that my long held expectations of dying young were not an inevitable fact as I’d always assumed, but a self-fulfilling prophecy that I was going to make happen if I didn’t pull my head out of my ass. Jason and I spent a lot of time talking about my health, my eating disorder, and our future, and he said a lot of things that made me reframe my perspective. I started to understand that by taking care of myself, I was taking care of both of us and nurturing our marriage. To this day, six years free and clear of an eating disorder, I still feel like my motives for getting on track with my diabetes weren’t as pure and noble as I wish they had been. However, I also see that what counts most is that I got on track, I’ve stayed on track, and most importantly, I plan to stick around as long as I can because I love Jason, I love being married to him, and I want to be there for him just like he’s been there for me, ’til death do us part, which is many years from now if I have any say in the matter.

WEGO Health is hosting National Health Blog Posting Month. Since I’ve gotten sorely burned out on blogging by participating in NaBloPoMo in the past, signing up for NHBPM is against my better judgment, but I do lots of things against my better judgment so at least I’m staying true to character. I think it’s unlikely I’ll be able to complete the blog prompt for each day this month since I have a zillion other things going on in November – the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange, several school assignments including a 15-page paper that’s due next week, and a vacation this month – but I’m going to give it a whirl, and see what happens.

November 1st Prompt: Say you’re writing a book about your life, community, condition, or Health Activism. Come up with 5 working titles and a quick book jacket synopsis.

So these are my titles. The accompanying short descriptions aren’t exactly book jacket synopses, but they’re my initial thoughts on what each of these titles might contain.

The Art of Living with Diabetes
This would be a coffee table art book, edited by me. In addition to lots of full-color gorgeous photography of beautifully expressive diabetes art, it would include some creative writing, and maybe some short essays. I would write a nice introduction about the healing value of arts-based activities for coping with diabetes because I’m predictable like that.

Creating a Life with Diabetes
This self-help book would address practical issues around the emotional and relational aspects of diabetes, like dealing with the diabetes police (and other people who need to MTOFB), developing a balanced relationship with food, and finding support, with a touch of snark for humor, as well as some art directives to reinforce concepts.

Glitter, Paint & Sidewalk Chalk: The New Tools for Diabetes Management
This would be a workbook of sorts, heavy on the art directives, and it would include some creative writing and journaling exercises too. The emphasis would be on nurturing your emotional well-being and creative spirit as a means of coping with and thus better managing diabetes.

Testing the Limits: Into the Emotional Abyss of Diabetes and Back
This juicy poolside read would be purely autobiographical about all the crap – depression, suicide attempt, insulin omission, bulimia, family conflict, diabetes complications, mental health treatment, and all my fuck-ups along the way – but I would also tell how I managed to turn things around because not every story has a happy ending, but mine has a happy to-be-continued.

Diagnosis, Despair, Determination, Destiny: A Diabetes Story
This would be autobiographical also, but maybe a little less salacious and dark, with a greater emphasis on what I learned from the past, how I came to be where I am now, and all the things that are great about finding meaning in my struggles with diabetes, presented in such a way that others could draw inspirationand overcome their struggles.

1. Health insurance woes and worries

I always feel obligated to preface my complaints about health insurance by saying that I’m grateful to have it. People with diabetes who don’t have health insurance struggle to get their minimum health needs met. Because diabetes is such a costly disease to manage, particularly for people on insulin, many people without health insurance end up cutting corners. I do cut some corners to save money, but I know I’m in a much better position than a lot of other people, and I thank my lucky stars for that.

That being said, I think we can all agree that health insurance is for healthy people, not people with diseases who most need it, so when you have a disease, health insurance is a major source of unlimited grief. Health insurance companies will have you pulling out for hair, inventing curse words, and having complete meltdowns.

I know the customer service rep on the other end of the phone line isn’t responsible for their crappy policies so I do feel terrible that I freak out on them. It’s the board members, CEO’s, CFO’s, the big wigs, the people setting policy that I hate. It’s our economic and political system that coddles those greedy jerkfaces. I hate them all, and I wish awful things on them – hydrogen bombs, plagues, John McClane, zombies with a specific taste for health insurance company executives’ brains. I was going to say aliens that rip out and feast on human hearts, but the poor aliens would starve to death if their sole source of nourishment was health insurance officials…*ba-da-bump*. More fitting would be slow torturous deaths while on the phone with their own customer service departments, begging for coverage for medication, supplies and services they need to live with diabetes. Now that would be karmic retribution.

2. Sweaty lows, nauseous lows, befuddled lows, nocturnal lows, unconscious lows, topless lows…

Having low blood sugar sucks. You can’t process information, you have to stop and wait for your BG to get back to normal, sometimes you’re so hungry you end up overeating and then you feel like crap later because your BG soars. It stops you in your tracks, and in turn, often inconveniences others. It makes you feel helpless and frustrated, and it can be really frightening for people with diabetes and their loved ones. It interrupts anything and everything. Hypoglycemia is a disaster waiting to happen at any given moment. The fact that it can easily kill you brings me to the next thing I hate about diabetes…

3. My pathological fear of dying

I think about dying a lot. It terrifies me because I feel like it follows me around like a shadow, waiting for an opportune moment to swallow me whole. Death is an obvious inevitability for everyone, but knowing that my life expectancy is already shriveled because of diabetes freaks me the heck out. I go to bed at night, hoping I won’t die of a heart attack or hypoglycemia or dead-in-bed syndrome, hoping I’ll wake up in the morning. I worry that every little physical anomaly is an early sign of a heart attack. I hate that it concerns me as much as it does, I hate that I think about it as often as I do, I hate that it scares me to such a great extent. I especially hate that people my age without diabetes have the luxury of looking forward to life’s milestones, while all I can think about is gravestones. I know thinking about it now is a waste of time and energy, but I haven’t figured out how to make peace with it.

4. Food and eating is so complicated

I absolutely despise having to eat when I’m full, but sometimes my BG gets low after meals because I take too much insulin. I hate that when my BG is high, I feel like I shouldn’t eat certain things or shouldn’t eat at all. I hate that eating fun stuff like chocolate or ice cream or cookies is a bad idea for treating low blood sugar, and instead I have to drink juice or eat glucose tabs or hard candy. I hate that diabetes makes it nearly impossible to have a purely joyful experience of eating delicious food because before or after or even between bites, I have to think about how it’s going to affect me, what my BG is, and what my BG might do in response to that food. I hate that I have to play pancreas instead of just savoring what I eat.

5. Thinking about it every other minute

This is not much of an exaggeration. No matter what you’re doing, where you are, how you feel, who you’re with, what occasion it is, what time zone you’re in, what hour of the day it is, how tired you are, how busy you are, how emotionally drained you are, you have to think about it. Where’s my meter? What’s my BG? Do I have enough test strips? How many carbs are in that? How’s that going to affect my BG? Why is my BG low? Why is it high? Why won’t it come down? Why won’t it come up? Did I bolus? Did I over-bolus? Are my basal rates correct? Do I need to do basal testing? Did I refill my prescriptions? Do I have refills on my prescriptions? Do I need to get labwork? Do I have lab slips? Where did I put my lab slips? When is my doctor’s appointment? Did I make that appointment? Do I want to keep seeing that doctor? Are my co-pays going to change? Is my insurance going to change? Am I going to lose my insurance? How am I going to pay for all this stuff? Why is my BG still so high? Did I check my feet? Are those shoes going to cause problems? Why is my vision blurry? Why did my foot fall asleep? Do I have glucose tabs or juice with me? Will they discriminate against me? Will they ask me annoying questions? Will they treat me differently? Should I even tell them I have diabetes? Where should I put my pump? Where should I put my CGM? Can I find a handbag that will hold all my diabetes crap that isn’t as big as a suitcase? Does that dress have pockets? Should I eat dessert? Should I have a glass of wine? Should I adjust my basal rate? Did I reattach my pump? Why the frik is my BG still so high?

Why am I depressed? Oh, maybe it’s because I’m constantly thinking about this crap.

6. Feeling like a burden to everyone

I vaguely recall having an exchange with a parent of a D kid who said they make sure they don’t let on that their child’s diabetes is a burden. I told them their kid knows, and their kid feels guilty. She disagreed. When I was a kid, I felt like a burden to my mom, and I felt guilty for it. I think most adults who grew up with type 1 will say they had a similar experience. Feeling like a burden has eaten away at me for as long as I can remember. Now I’m a burden to my husband. Having diabetes is a burden on the people who love you, no matter what type of diabetes, no matter how old you are, no matter how long you’ve had it. There’s just no way around it. I know people put up with diabetes because they love us. I know having us in their lives with diabetes is better than not having us in their lives, but I despise that it affects them as much as it does. I hate that they worry about us dying, having low or high blood sugar, developing complications, or any of the million things that cause worry for people and families with diabetes. My guilt is irreconcilable.

7. Mental illness

Depression runs in my family, so I can’t fully blame diabetes for this one. However, I do give diabetes a whopping credit for my depression. Diabetes is depressing, diabetes is a burden, and diabetes causes guilt, self-consciousness, anxiety, anger, hesitation, worry, fear, embarrassment, and a range of experiences and emotional states. It takes its toll on people’s psychological wellbeing, and many of us experience depression at some point in our lives.

While depression is common amongst people with diabetes, there are other mental illnesses that as associated with diabetes. Diabetes really complicates our relationships with food and our bodies, and for some, that can lead to an eating disorder. For people with type 1, especially young women, insulin omission is far too common, but for some people with type 2, binge eating disorder is a significant issue. People with mental illnesses characterized by psychosis are often at risk for developing type 2 diabetes because of the medications they take to manage their mental illness.

Mental illness of any kind is difficult. Diabetes of any kind is difficult. Having both is that much more difficult.

8. Sex

Diabetes is with you all the time, so you can close and lock the bedroom door all you want, it’s following you in there. And it’s not just going to sit quietly in the corner, or even wait patiently on the nightstand while you do your thing. It’s getting into bed with you and snuggling up. It might beep, it might vibrate, and not in a helpful kind of way. It might interrupt and turn your lovemaking into a picnic for one of juice boxes and glucose tabs. It will have you wondering if you can keep going for just a few more minutes before you have to tap your partner and tell them the festivities will be ending early. It might even make you pass out, also not in a good way. It will never let your thoughts stay sexy because it will interrupt with worries about your pump site, CGM, BG, or how many carbs were in those edible undies. Basically, diabetes doesn’t want you to have a fulfilling sex life, but don’t stop trying!

9. Complications

Most people talk about The Big 3: retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy. Those are definitely scary. After all, who wants to go blind, lose their kidney function, or get their feet chopped off? There’s so much more to it than that though. First, the number one thing that kills us is cardiovascular disease, so I’ve already placed bets that a heart attack or stroke is going to be get me in the end. Beyond those biggies though, there are so many other things that can happen as a result of diabetes.

Diabetes damages the microvascular system, and that means every system, every part of your body is at risk. Most people tend to think pretty exclusively of peripheral neuropathy, but that autonomic neuropathy is nothing to sneeze at. It can damage the heart, any part of your gastro-intestinal tract (diabetic diarrhea anyone?), your sexual function, and whatever else your autonomic nervous system controls.

Then there’s the stuff no one mentions until you’re at the doctor asking about some seemingly oddball problem. I have diabetic mastopathy so I have weird boobs. I’ve had frozen shoulder in both shoulders and both hips, and from what I understand, frozen shoulder can affect any joint. Within the last six months, I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, and now I have to wear ugly braces on my wrists when I sleep. So complications can kill or disable you, but they can also adversely affect your quality of life by being a perpetual nuisance.

10. Anger

Do you ever get angry about having diabetes? I spent years taking my anger out on myself because I had so much of it and didn’t know how to constructively cope with it. After lots of therapy, support, and gaining some perspective, I still have an occasional moment, but most of the time, I accept diabetes for what it is, and try to focus on more positive things.

Sometimes though, the anger rises to the surface. The problem with diabetes anger is that there’s no one to yell at, no one to beat up, nothing to blame. Even after you have a monumental breakdown, one that makes you think you’ve gotten all the anger out of your system, the anger never really goes away because diabetes is always there, poking, prodding, instigating. It tends to be unpredictable, uncooperative, incorrigible, unforgiving, and relentless, so even if you feel OK about diabetes right now, just wait because like a fault line, it’s going to slip, and the anger will bubble to the surface yet again.