Last night I was working on a project with someone, and I felt my cognitive abilities start to slip. It was an hour after I normally eat.
So I said “I have to eat now”.
She wanted to keep going.
I said “No, you don’t understand, I HAVE to eat NOW. I’m diabetic”.
She said, “Everyone in the world knows you are diabetic”.
I acknowledged that was true — as it is. And left her and ate.
I felt much better later. But I had so many thing I wanted to say, but bit my tongue.
Yes, I’m out there with my diabetes. Preventing complications — which I’ve managed to do so far — is number 1 with me. It comes before my dogs, my husband, my students. It comes before even a project I’m working on.
Why? Because if I don’t take care of it, I won’t be able to do anything else.
I watched my dad die of diabetes, and it was not a fun way to go. He made it fun, but it wasn’t. I don’t want to be that way.
I want to be the woman who does a really good job running an Agility World Course with her beagle — which I did last night.
I don’t want to be house bond and on oxygen like my dad was.