Slow learner

So tying together the dreams and the fat and the diabetes (seriously, it all relates—I am a very integrated person), I may have written before about a dream I had a long time ago where I saw whom I would be if I was not fat. I have to talk about her as a separate person, because she was so different. She was beautiful, and a dancer, and she had pretty much no heart. Everything had just been so easy for her that she had never learned any empathy or patience or compassion. It was not that she was intentionally mean, but with no sensitivity whatsoever she did tend to stomp on feelings. Thinking about her, and what it would take for her to develop some sympathy (a devastating injury) was where the storyline for Out of Step came from.

It seems like an oversimplification now, because I thought of myself as fat before I was fat, and other people who have had similar issues have turned out quite differently, but I do still believe that I have learned a lot from this weakness, and dealing with my own issues has led me to be more sympathetic to the things that other people struggle with, even when their issues are very different. That is valuable to me. It doesn’t exactly make me grateful to be fat (or at least to still be fat, because I’ve been compassionate for a while now), but I am grateful that there have been good things from it. Some people just end up bitter.

Diabetes has been its own course of study. Seriously, it started out very literally with a four-week class, and I have learned things about physiology and nutrition and psychology.

I mentioned shame in the previous post, and that has been my defining trait for most of my life. I would blame my failings on being lazy or being a coward, but they didn’t track. I was hardworking and brave for lots of things, but I was consistently putting my efforts into everything but me. I could not value myself enough to do things for me. Some of it was that everyone else had higher priority, and some of it was probably punishing myself for not being good enough, but the results ended up being pretty much the same. There is probably more to write about that, at some other time, but today’s topic is how that trait has been affected by diabetes.

I mentioned yesterday how dangerous it was to just assume everything bad that happened was my fault, from something I was doing wrong. One thing that is incredibly dangerous for a diabetic is self-neglect. My body might not process sugars well on its own, but with the added insulin sometimes it gets a little too efficient. If I let myself get too low, I start feeling sick, and I’m lucky that I do tend to notice, because if I kept getting lower I could end up in a coma, or at some stage in between requiring emergency medical care.

This means I need to be careful about meals. I need to be eating regularly, and planning them so there is a good mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, You know how some people don’t feel like eating in the morning? I am one of those people, and not really being a morning person, and having a tendency to be running late, I used to charge out of the house without breakfast more often than not. I can’t really do that anymore. Well, I can—it’s just dangerous.

I need to be careful about sleep. During sleep your body carries on many important biological processes, including processing sugars in the blood. Based on my morning blood sugar scores, it appears that every hour of sleep I miss adds about twenty points. Granted, I am a happier person when I have a full night of sleep anyway, and probably more productive, but that can be hard to remember the night before when I have not accomplished everything that I wanted or needed to accomplish. However, since lack of sleep leads to extra sugar in my blood, and that does bad things to my organs and long-term health, I need to deal with that.

Being diabetic adds a ritual before every meal, where I need to measure and inject (and take at least one pill, except for lunch), and the timing is important, because the injection is the fast-acting insulin, and if I take it and then eating is delayed for some reason, it can send me back into low-blood sugar territory. This does not even mention the work of making sure that I always have the correct supplies, not only keeping track of my various prescriptions, but also the syringes for the slow-acting insulin, the pen needles for the fast acting insulin, and the lancets and test strips for measuring. I’m like a senior citizen, years ahead of schedule.

It also changes my mental view of myself. I remember someone who did muscle testing looking at me years ago and saying something about me having the constitution of a horse. It was true. I was never the fastest or the most coordinated, but I was strong and could go on forever, and that’s gone. I liked that about myself, and sometimes when my body is not equal to my goals I feel so fragile, which is exactly the opposite of what I want to be. I was supposed to be the strong and capable one! And I am, kind of, but not completely.

Also, the most common way that my family expresses concern for me is to ask how my blood sugar is, which is pretty annoying, since I would rather not think about it or share it with other people.

Wasn’t this going to be about the positive aspects, and what I have gained from diabetes? Well, it is. I mean, having to downgrade my self-image isn’t necessarily fun, but if part of my weakness is an unwillingness to rely on and trust others, and I find that I am not, in fact, made of steel, well, there is probably some value in that. It is not the only issue that needs fixing with my self-image, but it is still an important part.

In addition, I have to take care of myself. It is not just a good thing to do, or a nice idea; it has become absolutely vital. If I want to have any ability to do anything, including serving others, it has to start with tending to me, like it or not. I am slowly getting better at that.