A lot of the people who are kind enough to read this blog have heard me say this before: having diabetes is a lot like having a toddler. Admittedly, I have never had a toddler. But based on others' descriptions, it's pretty good conditioning for the inevitable time when I do.

For anyone who isn't sure, when I talk about diabetes, I'm referring  to Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes. It's not the kind that is often linked with an unhealthy lifestyle, and it cannot be controlled with oral medication or a restricted diet. My pancreas can't, or won't, produce insulin (some other time I'll ramble on about all the different theories about refusal vs. inability as far as my pancreas is concerned. I find it simplest to just classify my pancreas as a piece of crap), so I have to use synthetic insulin, which has to be injected under the skin. Type 1 is much rarer -- there are thought to be about 2 million of us in the U.S., vs. something like 22 million people with Type 2. The main similarity between Type 1 and Type 2 is that you have high blood sugar, which, when uncontrolled, leads to a buttload of health complications that eventually pretty much tear up your entire body. But the reason why your blood sugar is high is totally different, and there are a lot of differences in the treatments (most Type 2s do not have to inject themselves with insulin).

Despite the once-common (now less so) moniker of juvenile diabetes, I squeaked through the first 29 years of my life without developing it. No one really knows why most Type 1s get it as children, but some of us manage to slip past and stave it off for a few extra years. So in some ways (and particularly in comparison to most adults with it) I am still a newcomer to the disease, though it's now been 3 1/2 years. I still enjoy an extraordinarily wonderful life and generally am not much perturbed by it.

Not long after my diagnosis, Brandon and I started referring to it as the SFD (Stupid Fucking Disease). This probably sounds sort of funny, but from my perspective it serves a very practical purpose. When I've carelessly o.d.ed  on insulin and my blood sugar is dropping, it can be inexplicably difficult to say something like, "My blood sugar is low and I need to go find some juice and sit down because right now I feel like I'm either going to pass out, throw up, or scratch your eyeballs out." (Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, tends to be accompanied by lightheadedness, nausea, and an appalling sense of irritation with everyone and everything in sight.) It's incredibly efficient and much less melodramatic to just mumble "SFD" and Brandon knows exactly what I mean. And will either step out of the way or lunge to get me some juice himself before I become an actual threat.
Anyway, back to the part where I anthropomorphize my disease by comparing it to a toddler. I've decided this is going to be at least a two-part entry, because there's too much to say.

1. I can never, ever walk out the door without making sure I have the junk I need to keep the SFD calm, should it become fussy.
I need to make sure I have my test kit, and some kind of pure sugar (juice boxes or Lifesavers, generally), and a snack to treat a bout of hypoglycemia. This is *always.* As a result, there are often empty juice boxes strewn around the car, or lying on their side next to my side of the bed, thanks to nighttime lows. There are usually some slightly stale, sticky individually wrapped Lifesavers floating around in the bottom of my purse as well as several dozen empty wrappers. Right now there are crumbs all over the stick shift of our Mazda because I had to devour a granola bar while driving to stave off a low today. It looks like a 3-year-old has been hanging around in that car. Imagine the days to come when Elaine shrieks as I suck down a box of apple juice while telling her she can't have one.

2. The SFD is totally unpredictable.
Some days it's pretty easy to manage and responds to situations the way I expect it to and doesn't make a big nuisance of itself. Then there are the other days, when it acts like a complete troll all day long. I am thought to be a "brittle" diabetic, which means there is evidence that from time to time my pancreas will shudder to life and spit some insulin out of an otherwise rusted-out beta cell. That sounds cool, except that it's not. It means that for a day or sometimes three, I'll be in a near-constant state of hypoglycemia. There have been nights when I've woken three times bathed in sweat, trembling like a sewing machine, feeling like I'm going to pass out (which is a very strange feeling to wake up to). By the time I realize there's a pattern, it's over. Keep in mind, I'm a working professional, so this means I can be in the middle of a meeting and will suddenly notice I can't focus on written words very well and sweat is trickling down the back of my neck. Like the mother in the grocery store whose 2-year-old is emitting the first shrill whine of a pending meltdown, I'll try to whip to the finish of whatever we're doing and hope no one notices that I can't seem to follow the conversation. All I want to do is get out and hide somewhere with my juice while I wait for the little beast to calm back down.

3. The SFD seems to have a keen eye for when Mommy and Daddy need some, um, "Business Time."
I'll keep this brief because this is a family blog (meaning, my family might at some point actually read it), but let's just say that there have been way, way too many times when Brandon and I are enjoying each other's company and everything has to grind to a halt (no pun intended) because the SFD has entered the room and is demanding my undivided attention. It's about the furthest thing from hot.

4. Just as everyone seems to be an expert on how to cope with a difficult toddler, absolutely every stranger is an expert on diabetes.
"Oh my aunt has that," they'll say breezily. "But she's able to control hers with a healthy diet." Well, I usually try to gently explain, she probably has Type 2, and that's a bit different from what I have. People will make jokes about how I should have been more careful about how much candy I ate when I was younger, and I'll get into how my problem is due to having not been careful when I chose my gene sequence and NOT due to how many @#*$& Tootsie Rolls I ate. But by then whoever I'm talking to has usually tuned out, and I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to hear someone rambling on about their SFD, either (*ahem!*). The American Diabetes Association recently launched a campaign to put the "deadly" back in diabetes because so friggin many people have it (usually Type 2), the general public is starting to assume it's right up there with split ends as far as troublesome afflictions go. While I hate "scare" language in the media and I don't much appreciate being reminded myself of what the long-term consequences of diabetes are, I have to say I understand the need to get people to take it seriously.

I now wear an insulin pump. This relieves me of the awkwardness of having to pull up and inject syringes of insulin while sitting at the dinner table--if you want to test people's ability to remember not to stare, that's an effective way to do it--but there are some tradeoffs. It pretty much trashes every cute outfit I could ever attempt to assemble; it looks like a clunky pager attached to my waist. I often see it in my shadow, or reflected in glass I'm walking toward, and hate how it makes me look slightly like a bookie or like someone who thinks she's terribly important but almost definitely is not. When I first got mine almost two years ago and showed up to work wearing it, two of my coworkers asked (and I am not making this up), "Are you actually going to wear that?" A woman in Peet's once asked me if it was a pedometer. Awesome.

I need to wrap this up. I'll finish my list later (not necessarily my next post), after your eyeballs have recovered. To anyone who has read this far, my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to you. There is one more point that I have to squeak out before the shepherd's hook drags me offstage: please, please, whatever forces there are in the universe that control such things, please don't let my beautiful daughter develop this disease. Annoying as it is, I still enjoy an incredibly high quality of life and generally don't complain much about it. But I can't bear the thought of her having to deal with all this hassle. So please, PLEASE, those of you who can't seem to stop yourselves from doing so, please think about things like that when you politicize medical research. My life may depend on it, but I'll gladly forfeit mine a million times over before gambling hers.