Hi y'all!
Happy summer! Hope the world is being kind to you.
For those of you who have been here for a while, you know that I always post on my diaversary. April 21, 2010 was the day I was diagnosed, and it's a day that carries a lot of significance for me, in ways both good and bad. At its best, it's a day of triumph at surviving another year of my own body trying to kill me every minute; at its worst, it's a reminder of everything I lost all those years ago and how far I still have to go. Either way, it's important.
I was going to post this year, I swear. I don't know what I was going to say - I never plan out my posts in advance; they just kind of spill out of my brain when I open a blank page - but I know it was going to be something. And then, true to form, diabetes decided it had other plans.
The night of April 20th was not an easy one. I was in final tech rehearsals for a play that was being performed outside, and it was cold. And of course, both cold and stress increase insulin resistance. I genuinely can't remember the last time I found it so difficult to keep my blood sugar in a safe range. I ignored every guideline about stacking, threw caution to the winds, and injected probably two or three days' worth of insulin over the course of five hours. Nothing made a difference.
I finished tech rehearsal around 11, somehow managed to walk home, threw up in my dorm bathroom, curled up on my bed, and proceeded to not move for the next several hours. I know what DKA feels like, of course - pretty much every PWD does - but it had been ages since I'd had symptoms this intense, and they didn't let up for most of the night. It's nothing I hadn't felt before, and nothing I won't feel again, but that doesn't mean it didn't affect me; I couldn't do my homework that night, let alone write a blog post.
There's a very real trauma that comes from diagnosis. Some of my T1 friends were diagnosed at such a young age that they can't remember what it was like - but I do. And starting my diaversary in DKA was the perfect way to bring all of those memories rushing back. "my body rly said #tbt," I texted a friend at 1am. The flashbacks were intense - probably worse than any I've had - and I struggled to stay grounded, both overnight and throughout the following day.
So how do you get through a day when both the past and present are teaming up to remind you of the weight of this particular burden? Good question. I've had twelve years of practice pushing through days like that - because sometimes when you feel like you can't do something, the universe just laughs and says, "do it anyway." And so you do. I relied on my incredible partner, my friends, and a healthy dose of pain meds. I went to classes, somehow, and then slept for a few hours so I could get through opening night of our show. I tried to stay present. I tried not to think too much about where I was on that day twelve years ago. There's a time for reflection and remembering, but there's also a time for survival, and right then, that was all I could manage.
I'm learning to make peace with that fact. Being an advocate means feeling a certain obligation to share these parts of my struggle, showing the world what it's like to live with a condition that leaves me fighting for my life at the most unexpected moments. But on my diaversary, I made a choice to just survive. Even now, a month later, I'm reminding myself that I don't have to feel guilty for not marking that day with the reflection I know it deserved. I'm trying to believe that sometimes, just surviving is enough.
Love y'all. Thanks for being here. Stay tuned for another post soon - I should have an exciting update next week!
