San Francisco.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early (actually, it might even be dark and early), I’m flying to San Francisco for the fourth annual BlogHer conference. I wrote about it last year in Chicago, and this year promises to be just as much fun - if not more! There will be plenty of parties, as well as informative sessions where I’ll have a chance to hear from some of the most well-respected and prolific writers in the blogosphere. On both a personal and professional level (my client, Picnik, is one of the sponsors), I feel like I will gain a lot from the next few days.

Postings may be a little light, but I will write a full recap when I return on Sunday. Then I’ll have just two days until I’m off to Orlando for the Children with Diabetes conference! It’s a conferenceapalooza!

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

A Whole Year.

Last Saturday, I drove down to my dad’s cousin’s house for dinner after babysitting for a little girl with diabetes and her baby brother. My great aunt was also there, so we spent some time catching up on work and life. I told them about my plans for moving, talked about my job, and I found out that her daughter, my cousin lives in Israel, is going to have a baby girl soon. Then I realized that it had been exactly one year since I moved to New Jersey and I was exactly where I started. A full circle.

Today is another important date. Well, to me it is. I started my job one year ago today. I feel a little self-conscious bragging about my job and co-workers because, well, they all apparently read this. (Hello co-workers!) But needless to say, I’ve learned more about social networking and blogs than I ever did in the two years of being a blogger and I’m very, very appreciative that none of the people I work with are psychos. They are a little nuts sometimes but thankfully just the good kind.

Besides growing professionally, I also feel like this was the year I became a full-fledged adult. I pay my own rent. I have my own 401K and health insurance. I have made new friends, including some that don’t rely on artificial insulin! When I wake up in my apartment, or when I get another bill, or when I’m standing in the hallway getting a new reservoir from the closet, I still get a little thrill that this is all mine. I don’t know how long this will last… Maybe I have only a few more months before I think being a grown-up is totally overrated. Okay, occasionally I think being a grown-up is overrated, but mostly I think it’s pretty cool.

I’m excited to see where the next year leads me, especially with my impending move, and seeing how my responsibilities change both professionally and personally. I have added new freelance jobs to my resume in the past few months. In November, I signed on as a writer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and I’m leading the JDRF Blogger Round Table, this spring I’ve been working on a new article for Diabetes Self-Management, and on my trip to Oregon, I met with the founder of SweetSpot.dm and agreed to help with publicity. I continue to enjoy exploring New Jersey, which despite the rumors is actually very nice, and the entire East Coast.

Plus I have this whole list of exciting adventures to complete.

When I moved, I knew my life was going to change dramatically. But I couldn’t imagine just how true that was going to be. Although I am living in New Jersey, a state I never imagined living in (seriously, who grows up saying “I want to move to New Jersey!”) and although I’m working at a PR agency instead of that non-profit I spent five years preparing for, I think “Allison” has still stayed the same. I try to keep the same values that I was raised with. I still hate the humidity. I think sales tax is the most annoying thing in the world. I am still frustrated that my apartment complex doesn’t support recycling. I still wish I could see Mt. Hood, I still think trees are as important as people, and I still think people need to slow down and enjoy life just a little bit more.

You can take the girl out of Oregon, but you can’t take the Oregon out of the girl.

Get to Know The Other Me

I don’t talk about my “real job” very much on this blog, and by “real” I mean the one that gives me a salary, a 401k and full benefits. I very much consider diabetes advocacy as my job, but I get paid only for specific jobs, and it doesn’t have any of those necessary perks like health insurance.

Earlier this week I conducted my first non-diabetes interview for a blog about public relations and social media called Social Media Explorer. The interview is about my double life: one as a PR professional who pitches bloggers, and the other as a blogger who gets pitched by PR professionals.

The interview does touch on my life with diabetes, but not in the typical fashion where I talk about finger pricks and insulin pumps and low blood sugars. This interview is more about our community and how as a blogger who happens to write about diabetes, I feel about being pitched and some of the tactics that PR professionals are starting to take in order to build relationships with bloggers. I hope you’ll check it out. Also, if you have been emailed by PR people, I invite you to share your thoughts about what they do and don’t do well. I often feel that I am in an echo chamber of proper blogger relations, so it would be great to hear from a new audience of bloggers who may not have had a chance to share their opinions on being pitched to promote a product or event on their blog.

Edit: Hello to all the new people coming from Social Media Explorer! Welcome, welcome.

I joked that I am like Superman, which is why the picture of me with Superman is featured. Now if only I had a cape…

Self-Identification

In the past week, I’ve attended two social events from two different organizations. The first was a movie (Made of Honor) and drinks, and the second was a women’s networking dinner. So far I’ve met two dozen girls that live in New Jersey, all of them a little bit older than me (which, at 22, isn’t all the surprising), all working professionals, some of them single, some of them married, and none of them know I have diabetes (technically I told two ladies who I met at the beginning of the dinner, but then I changed my mind and didn’t tell anyone else - luckily they didn’t bring it up again). It was strange spending so many hours with so many women and not having diabetes come up once. I tested in my car and bolused covertly under the table.

For such a long time, diabetes was almost forced into the conversation. When I first diagnosed, all my friends knew because, well, I was just diagnosed with a chronic illness and was in the hospital and it was kind of a big deal. So they knew, and all my teachers and classmates knew because that’s just what you did. When I went to college, sometimes people asked me if I worked, for months my answer was Diabetes Teen Talk. When people asked me what I hoped to do with my degree in public relations, my answer was to work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (I honestly had no plans to work for an agency, and I would still love to work for JDRF in the future). Without even meaning, diabetes became very much a part of everything I did. I didn’t exactly hate this solid integration of diabetes into the rest of my life, but I did get tired of teaching diabetes all the time, as you do.

When I moved here, most of my immediate friends were people I knew because of blogging. My social circle because almost entirely people with diabetes. At work, my boss knew I had diabetes before I even had my interview (the guy from DiabeticFoodCritic is the one who got me the interview, so it was kind of obvious). Which was actually kind of cool because I avoided that whole “So, I have this thing called diabetes… and sometimes I might need to take a break…” My co-workers knew right away, because one of the reason I got my job in social media public relations was because I was the “girl who blogged about diabetes.”

Now, I’m starting to make new friends. And I’m not telling them. At least, not yet. It’s strange. For a few brief hours, it’s almost as if I don’t have a disease. I answered questions about moving from Oregon, about my job, about where I live and what I think about New Jersey. I talked about how cool Hoboken is, I talked about movies I liked, I talked about yummy Indian food in Edison. I listened to the girls tell me about their jobs, their relationships and their hobbies.

I’m not sure what difference the silence really made. It’s not like I wouldn’t have talked about those same things if I had told them I have diabetes. But I think my self-identification, this idea in my head that saying I have diabetes automatically makes someone think I’m sick and weak, has made more of a difference to my self-esteem than anything anyone has actually said. I wonder if all of our concerns about telling people we have diabetes, all of our covert operations, are really just our way of protecting ourselves. We are protecting ourselves from wondering if someone thinks we are defective. Not that people actually think we’re different, or unlovable, or someone they shouldn’t be around, but that we think they’re thinking that. So if we don’t say anything, we have a barricade up. It protects us from the things other people are thinking and the things we think other people are thinking.

I don’t know if any of it’s true. I don’t know what anyone thinks when they look at me. I hope they see someone who does what she thinks is right. Someone who tries to help people. Someone who tries to tries to be strong, and someone who always gets back up when she falls down. Because that’s what I see.

That’s what I try to be.

Benchmarks.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I was debating whether or not to start another blog in order to have some freedom to talk about decidedly non-diabetic topics. It was spurred by my introduction into a Ning (gotta love Ning!) network called 20somethings. I’ve added about ten new blogs just by twentysomethings over the past few weeks and they are completely diverse and interesting and identifiable in the same way that reading blogs by diabetics are.

I was reading this blog called Chelsea Talks Smack the other day and she was talking about expiration dates. Not expiration dates on food (though those are very important dates to be aware of) but about expiration dates on things like relationships and habits. Essentially, why are you still doing things you hate? And if you hate it, why are you doing it?

While I was reading this, I was reminded by a conversation I had with my dad a few years ago in regards to this relationship with a guy I went to college with. Well, I wouldn’t really call it a relationship, because we were definitely not dating - sadly, I liked him, he didn’t like like me - and we were trying, or at least I was trying, to salvage some kind of friendship.

Needless to say, things weren’t going well. After weeks and weeks of trying to work out some kind of system where he was comfortable knowing I wasn’t getting too “emotionally attached” (I’m a girl for Christ’s sake, whaddya expect?), my dad brought up this idea of benchmarks. How long was I willing to work on something? At some point, you have to evaluate the situation and decide whether or not it’s living up to expectations.

In a way, this can be applied to diabetes, but since I know there are at least a dozen people reading this who aren’t diabetic, I won’t dwell too much just on that. But I wonder how many of us have gone on with our routines simply because they’re the “routine” or tried to fix something that simply isn’t fixable, such as trying to manipulate your basal rates on Lantus. At a certain point, you have to realize that you just simply cannot do certain things and then you have to chuck it out the window.

Actually you should dispose of Lantus in a proper waste receptacle. Littering is bad.

Then there are things like the guy from college - think of all the relationships you put up with because you thought, “Well, if I just do this one thing everything will be fixed!” Uh, no. Things like jobs and living situations and lifestyle habits and especially relationships cannot always be manipulated to do what we want. Sometimes we just have to let it go because it’s either bad or simply played out. If it’s not moving you in the direction you want to go, why on earth should you keep doing?

Ever since I moved to New Jersey, people always ask me “Do you like it?” to which I reply, “Yes” and then they ask me if it’s different and I say, “Yes, I moved three thousand miles away to a suburb of one of the world’s largest metropolitan cities and it’s exactly the same.” Okay, I don’t actually say that, but you get the idea.

Lately, though, people have started asking me, “Are you planning on staying?”

First of all, as any of you who have moved three time zones can attest to, moving across the country is hard and it’s certainly not something to do willy-nilly. While I’m glad I moved away from home and ventured off into the wild blue yonder, I don’t think I have the physical, mental and especially emotional capacity to do this again and again and again.

But I have no idea how long I’ll stay here.

I’m twenty-freaking-two years old. Stop pressuring me!

But in all honesty, I need to develop some benchmarks for my life. I have already begun thinking of different things I would like to do in the next. They include going back school, taking time off to travel or working for a nonprofit (diabetes or otherwise). Whether or not I stay is really dependent on if I feel like my life is what I want it to be. I created a one year benchmark for my apartment, which was helpful because that’s how long my lease is. I evaluated if I feel my apartment is helping or hindering my life here, and I’ve concluded its hindering it. I live in a small suburb about 40 minutes by train from the city. There is not much of a social life in my little town, and while it’s nice, safe and easy to get to work, it’s not doing me any good when it comes to meeting people. So it’s adios to the apartment come June when my lease ends and I’ll start this process all over again when I move into my new place.

As far as my diabetes benchmarks go, I tend to evaluate things during my doctor’s appointments, which happen about three times a year and my benchmark, like most people with diabetes, is whether or not my A1C is going up or down. Down is good, up is bad. It’s pretty simple. For awhile, though, my A1C has been holding remarkably steady. While that’s not a bad thing, it’s not what I want. I’m not meeting my benchmark of lowering my A1C below 7.0% and it’s time for me to shake loose what isn’t working and focus on what is.

Benchmarks are important. A set time limit on how long you’ll do something before you sit back and say, “Well, is this working for me?” It isn’t always about what you are doing. Like the apartment, sometimes it’s the thing that’s the problem and you have to cut it loose so you can move on to bigger and better things.

What benchmarks are you trying to meet? Or what benchmarks have you set for other things? Are they working? And if not, what are you going to do about it?

So. Much. To. Do.

I have less than three days left before I take off for my vacation in Boston with my mom. I’m leaving immediately after work - actually I’ll probably leave about an hour early to try to beat traffic - on Friday and I’ll be gone until Tuesday night. My mom doesn’t actually leave until Thursday, so we’re spending Wednesday in the city. Which basically means I have to prepare myself for being away for almost a week.

There is so much to do.

I had to pick up my contact today and buy an iPod USB cable (which went missing about a month ago). I also need iPod car adapter so I can listen to music on my drive up, get my oil changed because I’m way way behind, send out second round of questions for the JDRF Blogger Round Table, try to get some progress made on the Diabetes Self-Management article and JDRF article, and clean my apartment or at least enough so that my mother doesn’t gasp when she sees the way I’m living, which I have to admit isn’t very pretty at the moment.

Did I mention I work nine hours a day?

It’s a lot and I’m already tired.

By the way, if there are any college students or just-out-of college students who would like to answer a few questions about nutrition during college, please shoot me an email at amblass at gmail dot com or leave me a comment with your contact information.

Boundaries.

Ever since Kerri posted about the play that she, Nicole, Shannon and Julia went to a couple weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the whole concept of Internet privacy and boundaries and how they play a role - if any - in how I blog. Anyone who reads my Twitter feed has probably seen a couple of casual mentions about starting a new and different blog. It isn’t the first time that I have attempted to step away from the diabetes spotlight since I started blogging about it almost three years ago. My ill-fated attempt at creating an comprehensive blog for myself did not go as well as planned. The reason I think that happened is because I had already established a rather diabetes-heavy audience and switching to an entirely new topic (my life in college) didn’t gel very well because most of the people who read my blog were not in college and I often felt a bit boring.

So an audience disconnect was one problem.

Another problem that I’m mulling over is the fact that there are things that I want to write about that I’m not necessarily sure I want the entire world to know that I’m writing. I became “Internet famous” at a rather young age. I was sixteen years old when I started my first website, I was seventeen when I started hosting Teen Talk, I was nineteen when I started this blog and I was twenty when I started Diabetes Teen Talk.

I went to prom, graduated from high school, started college, met new friends, dealt with deadlines, had my first job, traveled the country, took finals, met new people, got interviewed, graduated from college, found my first real job and moved across the country all on the Internet.

That’s a lot of my life, and not even including all the conferences, meet-ups and magazine appearances I’ve had.

I’m not exactly an unknown person.
But there are things that I wish I could talk about without having to worry about my parents, my boss, my co-workers, my grandparents and cousins and friends (all of whom read this blog ::waves::).

I feel stuck, in a way. I don’t want to stop writing about diabetes. I love having this outlet and I love hearing that this has helped others, like the mother who wrote me this week, “Your blog gives me hope.”

I mean, how can you stop writing a blog after that?

On one hand I want to write more about my life and I want to write about things without worrying about offending anyone’s sensibilities or having it brought up in real-life conversations or held against me in the future. I have been reading some blogs written by other twentysomethings who talk about boys and sex and work and living on their own and fashion. I want to write about the ten million other things going on in my head because right now, I need a “twentysomething support group” much more than I need a “diabetes support group.” Handling a disease is easy compared to starting a life practically from scratch. I know that I haven’t written very much about my move across the country, but damn is it hard.

On the other hand, however, I don’t necessarily want any of the aforementioned groups to know every last detail about what I’m thinking about or what I did last Saturday night (not that I did anything last Saturday night - this is purely hypothetical…).

Sandra also posted today with concerns about privacy for her son and how to maintain a balance without embarrassing him. With this blog, I’ve always been pretty strict that I don’t talk about anything that could potentially embarrass the person I’m writing about. I don’t write about arguments with my parents, I don’t write about the stupid things my friends do and I pretty much avoid the topic of work at all costs (except for that one post about the holiday party, but that was somewhat diabetes related so I feel that can be excused). Everything is in the context of what we do, not what is said, and I feel that is a pretty safe avenue to go down.

I don’t even know how to end this post because I’m still unresolved. There’s no magical resolution sentence saying, “But I’m going to do this and live happily ever after… the end!”

How do you break out of your shell without anyone knowing?

Old Friends.

Over the years, I have met a lot of people with type 1 diabetes at events like conferences, Walks to Cure Diabetes and support group meetings. It’s hard to keep up with everyone, which is why I enjoy blogging so much. The Internet is constant and my blog is (almost) always here, even when I’m not so I never have to worry about missing someone. I have met a lot of people at the events that I have kept in touch with over the years, but rarely have time to see because of distance and other scheduling factors.

So when I found out that Mollie and Jackie Singer were in New York City before they left, I jumped on the chance to see them. Mollie and I played Facebook Wall tag for about a day before we finally nailed down a time to meet. It was Friday night and we were going to meet at Penn Station for dinner.

It was a windy, rainy mess of an evening and I tried to contain my anxiety about missing the train to New York City. Mollie, her twin sister Jackie (who does not have diabetes but who knows more about the disease than most people with diabetes) and their mother, Jackie (who also happens to have a twin sister named Mollie - funny, no?) met me at Penn Station before we ventured back outside for dinner.

I picked Harrington’s Bar and Grill, a restaurant I had been to a couple times before and it has a great proximity to Penn Station. It’s just one block away and you only have to risk being killed by a taxi cab once.

The waitress led us to their upstairs dining area where it was slightly quieter away from the bar. Mollie, Jackie and I have known each other for over five years and I initially met Jackie at Children’s Congress in 2001. I recognized them from all the JDRF videos and promotional material that I had seen, but I didn’t get a chance to meet Mollie because of how busy we were as delegates. Not that it ever really mattered. Mollie, Jackie and I worked together for a couple of years on the original Diabetes Teen Talk, which at the time was “Teen Talk @ Diabetes Station.” Mollie and Jackie and I rotated hosting duties for the weekly chat. Mollie has also helped me on numerous projects over the years, so it was a thrill to finally meet in person.

The first part of the conversation revolved around why Mollie and Jackie were back in New York City though I’m sure Mollie will eventually post all the details on her blog so keep an eye out. We talked about how I ended up in New Jersey and I gave them a crash course in what I do for a living. I joked that six months after I started working in digital media for a public relations agency, my father was still asking, “But what does that mean?” I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to properly explain it, but I did feel successful when I introduced Mollie and Jackie to the idea of “microblogging,” which is blogging in short form rather than long prose. The most popular tools for microblogging are Twitter and Tumblr.

We also talked about diabetes advocacy and what it’s like to go from a child advocate to an adult advocate. Mollie and Jackie started a project called the Diabetic Angels at their school when they were younger, and now different chapters have popped up all over the world. They are planning on continuing to grow this project.

I mentioned how when I was selected to be a Children’s Congress delegate how mad I was at myself for starting so late.

“I remember telling my mother, I only have three more years!” I told them. We all agreed that it was important to continue this advocacy work even though we were passed that cut-off point for being a “juvenile” and hopefully it will help make people aware that this isn’t a children’s disease.

I have often said, “Juvenile diabetes is not a Peter Pan syndrome. It does not keep us children. We still grow up.”

I think we’re growing up quite well, if you ask me.

Mollie, myself and Jackie

No Delivery.

If you are currently on the fence about going on an insulin pump, you probably shouldn’t read this post.

It’s not pretty.

After dealing with a pump on the fritz on Sunday and 48 hours of fighting my blood sugars with an inadequate back-up regime of Lantus and Humalog, I finally thought I had salvation in the form on a brand-spanking-new insulin pump delivered to my office this morning.

At lunch, I scurried home to put in a new set and moved my reservoir from my poor broken pump to my snazzy, non-scratched pump. I started to do the priming using a fixed prime - going oh so slowly at 10 units a pop - until I realized I should just rewind the pump and start the priming process from scratch.

I realized this while I was driving and thought, “Well I’ll just do this at work. Priming while driving is probably dangerous.”

When I go to work, I sat down at my desk, hit the rewind button, hit the prime button, listen to the whirling of its rapid forward motion until I hit a BEEP BEEP BEEP.

NO DELIVERY.

Aw, c’mon!

You’re new! You are not allowed to be broken!

Now, in the new pump’s defense, NO DELIVERY alarms are not usually caused by the pump. It’s usually caused by a faulty reservoir or a kinked set. So until I got home, I wouldn’t be able to fix this.

Which left me with this conundrum:

It’s 2pm. My Lantus is almost up (I took Lantus yesterday at 3pm). I leave work at 6pm and I should be home at 6:30 pm. I’m already wearing a new set. I really, really don’t want to deal with Lantus for another day.

What to do? What to do?

Well, I decided to stick with frequent testing and injections of Humalog. My blood sugars have already soared to 354 mg/dl but I just dosed myself with an injection of 8 units, so hopefully that’ll hold me (maybe) until I get home. I don’t want to overdose either, so I’m taking it slow and hopefully by tonight everything will be worked out.

But at the rate I’m going, who knows?

A Wish While Waiting.

I want to be happy right now.

This week has been nearly perfect - not completely perfect because, c’mon, how many weeks are completely perfect? - but it’s been pretty darn good so far.

First, it’s a four day week. That alone makes it a pretty good week, neverminding everything else that’s happened. We have also had two visitors from our other offices in town this week, including one of my team members who I hardly ever see because he lives in silly Chicago (not that I don’t like Chicago or anything…). Then on Wednesday, I worked in New York City and that alone is pretty cool but I also attended the Media Bistro book launch party for Robert Rummel-Hudson’s new book Schuyler’s Monster at a chic club on Third Avenue which was also attended by Kerri and a whole host of other cool people whom I met, which is like ten cool things all in one. Then today, we had an awesome brainstorm about something I can’t tell you about or they’ll have me killed and then a whole bunch of my co-workers went out to a bar and had drinks and appetizers and I didn’t have to pay, so there’s another ten good things.

So there’s a lot of really good things about this week.

But this entire week has been filled with terrible, awful food that I most certainly could have avoided eating but of course, didn’t. On Tuesday, I went out to dinner with aforementioned co-workers and thinking I had the entire week to be good, decided, “Sure I’ll have some fries with my sandwich! Why not?” Then on Wednesday, I thought I would either make it back home in time to make dinner or something else would come up, but the aforementioned Robert (also known as The Rob, or more casually, Rob) and his friend decided to stalk down a diner in NYC. Perfect! After nearly nine hours of no food, I was pretty much ready for anything. Oh, and don’t forget the cocktails at the bar. Then I thought, okay, tomorrow (which is today) will be better. For the most part, it was. I ate a nice healthy full-of-fiber cereal and a glass of fat free milk. But then I went low. So I had some juice. And then I went low again. So I had some Dr. Pepper. When we headed out to the bar, I arrived at 71 mg/dl. So I had some more juice. And then I had some cocktails. Not realizing that appetizers was dinner, I ate some appetizers. Not a lot, but certainly not something I really should have been eating to begin with.Then I thought, “Okay, I am definitely definitely going to the gym tonight.” I had managed to make it to the gym on Tuesday after dinner and did some cardio for 45 minutes, which I thought helped. Didn’t do a darn thing yesterday seeing as how I didn’t arrive home until a quarter to midnight. Tonight was going to be different. Paying my tab and excusing myself from the little shindig, I announced that I had to go the gym tonight and scurried off into the frigid night air. I tested my blood sugar before I got into the car and rang in at 161 mg/dl.

Perfect! I thought. I’m set!

I drove home and changed into my gym clothes, hopped into the car and dashed off to NYSC. As I got onto the elliptical machine to do a quick half hour of cardio, I started to feel a little funny. I trudged along for about five minutes when I thought, Yeah, this really isn’t working so well. I should test.

I got off and went over to the table to test. I could tell immediately when I started walking that I was slow. That slow, cumbersome, woozy walk.

50 mg/dl. And like a snap of the fingers, my nearly perfect week was over.

Of course, since I was in such a rush to go to the gym, I forgot to repack my purse with an extra juice box (I had used the one in my purse earlier at the bar to take care of the 71 mg/dl). So I go into my car and carefully made my way over to the Wendy’s two blocks down the road. I ordered a regular Coke and pulled over into a parking space to sip my soda and wait.

Waiting.

Let me tell you something about waiting. There are certain times in my life when time seems to slow down to a halt. Waiting for an elevator when you’re late, waiting for a plane to take off or land (especially at Newark!), waiting for the next bus or train when you miss yours. With diabetes, time seems to slow down when I’m waiting for my blood sugar to rise after a low. It’s like I’m in a bubble. I’m in a bubble where time takes its sweet, well, time. But everything around me is still moving at the same speed. Sometimes even faster. After a low is over, it’s like I have so much to catch up on. There is so much I could have done if my body hadn’t been deficient in its source of energy.

Then there is the whole “it’s my fault” factor. Whenever I’m low, especially in situations that are out of the ordinary, I always think, if I had just done things the way I normally do things, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had just had a diet coke and a sandwich at the bar, I would be fine. But instead, I had to pretend I was like everyone else and drink alcohol and eat fatty foods that taste incredible. I think, I had to screw up the system and now I’m paying the price.

As I sat in my car in the Wendy’s parking lot, I thought all of these things. I thought about how if I didn’t have diabetes, I would still be at the gym working off all the food I just ate. But instead, I was sitting in the car sipping on yet another high calorie does-nothing-for-me drink except for the fact it had the carbohydrates my body was so desperately seeking.

I felt fat and sad and alone and miserable.

I should be happy right now. But instead, I am wishing that someday the time spent waiting for my blood sugars to rise back to normal or to fall back to normal, or the time I spend counting carbohydrates or filling my reservoir with insulin, or the time I spend checking my blood sugar at the gym, or the time I spend away from work or my friends or my family because I have “go do something really quick”, or the waiting at the doctor’s office or the pharmacy, or simply the time spent waiting for a cure is over.

I want this time back. There is so much I could have done with this time.