Category: Random

A Passive Aggressive Email to My Diabetes

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Ah, emails. They’re an effective way to communicate with colleagues, but just like text messages or any other written bit of information, it’s almost always impossible to gauge the tone of an email; thereby, making it really easy to misconstrue the meaning behind some of them.

Some, but not all.

In those other scenarios, it’s obvious what the sender was intending to convey if the email is peppered with particular language that is best characterized as passive aggressive. This language is polite and direct, but maybe said with a little bit of an attitude depending on the context. And almost everyone is guilty of sending an email with passive aggressive language within it, myself included.

There’s scarcely been a single time in which I actually wanted to come across as aggressive, or worse, disrespectful. But by the same token, it can be difficult to mask frustration when something was clearly conveyed in a prior communication or when you’re seeking feedback that nobody is providing to you.

So as I contemplated passive aggressive emails, and the phrases that typically comprise them, it dawned on me that there is definitely an email recipient that I’d love to send a fully charged, passive aggressive communication to…and that is, of course, my diabetes. Without further ado, here’s what I’d say in it:

Dear diabetes,

I wanted to circle back and ask you for an update. Sorry to bother you again, but I’m looking for feedback on how I could improve our working relationship.

As per my last email to you, I want to work smarter, not harder with you. As we discussed, your disruptions throughout my day affect more than just my productivity; moreover, they make it difficult for me to maintain a positive attitude. We both have a shared goal to maintain in-range blood sugars and in order to make that happen, I want to better understand your approach. What kinds of changes, if any, do you need me to make so I can help you thrive? Please advise. I’d be happy to escalate this issue to management, but in order to use time and resources more effectively, I wanted to follow up with you again first.

In order to maintain clarity, it’s important for you to reply at your earliest convenience. This is just my friendly reminder to you that I’d greatly appreciate your input or suggestions. Should you need further clarification, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks in advance,

Molly

Oooh, just merely crafting that pretend email made my fingertips tingle with the sarcasm as I typed. I’m not sure I’ve ever written something that was so clearly dripping with frustration and scorn, but I gotta say, it felt kinda nice.

And genuinely, I would greatly appreciate getting some type of response from my diabetes. It’s not like I’m going through burnout right now, but there have been some truly head-scratching moments in my life with diabetes lately that make me go “whyyyyyyyyyyy thoughhhhhhhhhh” in my most whiny tone of voice. Its unpredictability can get a little old, and I just want to know what I could or should be doing differently in order to handle it better.

Guess I’ll just have to find some solace in at least capturing my feelings here, and knowing that the periods of unpredictability will come and go, just as my blood sugar will rise and lower.

What Is That Ticking Sound?!

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Tick, tick, tick…

It was approximately 8 A.M. on a weekday. I was in my kitchen, figuring out what I should eat for breakfast. I begin to take out all the things I usually put into a fruit smoothie – almond milk, protein powder, frozen fruit – when I noticed the ticking.

Tick, tick, tick…

My eyes wandered over to the clock affixed to my kitchen wall; certainly, that was the source of the sound. I walked up to it and held my ear close before remembering that said clock has not functioned properly since the day it was put up (that’s a long story, one that hopefully ends in me repairing it eventually). I could rule out the clock.

Tick, tick, tick…

It sounded like a small winged insect, maybe one that was drawn to light, repeatedly flying into my overhead kitchen light. I squinted up, trying to avoid getting blinded by the brightness, as I attempted to locate a flying insect. I couldn’t see anything.

Tick, tick, tick…

I was getting annoyed now. Where was this coming from? Was I imagining it? I felt like a character from the old Harry Potter Puppet Pals YouTube video that was popular when I was a teenager. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch for a little giggle, but basically it features main characters from the Harry Potter series goofing about and singing their names while Professor Snape attempts to identify what is making a mysterious ticking noise in the background.

It was only after this silly video popped into my mind that it dawned on me…

…the ticking was coming from my pod. I’d picked up my PDM and started a bolus before I went into the kitchen. I just completely forgot that I’d done so.

Tick, tick, tick…beep!

Soon after this realization struck me, I started laughing at myself, and then my pod declared that the bolus was finished delivering with a single “beep”. I found it funny how something that I do multiple times each day still has the ability to confuse all common sense out of me. My pod makes ticking sounds, sometimes one or two at a time, and other times a series of dozens, all the time. More often than not, I’m oblivious to the sound, and I really only ever tune in to ensure that a bolus is getting delivered or whenever it’s reaaaaaaally quiet all around me and it’s the only sound to be heard. But apparently, it can still catch me off-guard to the point that I forget it exists.

At least I found out the source of the ticking, though.

Read Between the Lines

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I’ll never forget seeing the movie School of Rock for the first time.

When the movie came out 20 years (yes, somehow, some way, it’s already a two-decades-old film) ago, my dad took me and my older brother to see it in theaters. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was truly such an iconic movie that still holds up. It had the best rock ‘n roll music, cheeky and clever dialogue, and a fair few dozen references that I didn’t fully appreciate until I was a little older. But one that I understood right away, at the tender age of 10, was the moment in the movie in which Dewey (played effortlessly by Jack Black) mouthed off to another character by telling them to “read between the lines” and holding up three fingers. I knew immediately that he was telling the other person to ignore the two fingers and focus solely on the one in the middle, and my adolescent self thought this was hysterically funny and a totally brilliant way to give someone the finger without, well, actually doing it.

I’m not sure what prompted me to think about this scene randomly just a few minutes before I sat down to write this post, but naturally I started thinking about how life with diabetes is quite literally reading between the lines. We read in between the lines of our Dexcom or other CGM graphs constantly. Reading in between those lines can dictate whether we are having a good, bad, or somewhere-in-between diabetes day. Reading in between those lines often informs the next decision we make in terms of what we choose to eat, what we choose to do, and so forth. Reading in between those lines can contribute to an overwhelming amount of exhaustion, burnout, anger, frustration, relief, defeat, success, and sadness. No wonder the phrase (and intended meaning of) “read between the lines” inspires such passion!

So it shouldn’t be surprising that reading in between the lines makes me want to do my very best Dewey Finn/Jack Black impression and yell out to my diabetes itself, “read between the LINES!” and then kick a drum set aggressively before I storm out a room. But then I’m reminded that when you living with diabetes means that I’m hardcore. And as we learn in School of Rock, you’re not hardcore unless you LIVE hardcore.

So thanks for that reminder, School of Rock, that I’m hardcore and that just because having diabetes means that I do read between the lines often, it doesn’t mean that I can’t tell my diabetes to do the same.

Can You Speak Diabetes?

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Diabetes is a medical condition that should come with its own dictionary.

I’m not exaggerating. A diabetes diagnosis means having to learn what feels like a whole new vernacular in order to thrive with it. Words and terms like bolus, basal, CGM, A1c, among many others, can be straight-up confusing – especially if you didn’t grow up with diabetes like I did. It only recently occurred to me that I avoided a tough learning curve by receiving my diabetes diagnosis early in life. I knew the meaning of “hypoglycemia” and “endocrinologist” at an age when most kids were just trying to figure out how to say simpler phrases like “the cat sits on the mat”. I grew up speaking diabetes, a second language that I don’t always give myself credit for knowing as well as I do.\

I know it so well, in fact, that I’m often sprinkling in diabetes words and phrases into my regular daily conversations. I expect my close relatives and friends to know what the difference between my “pod” and my “PDM” are, but I sometimes forget that colleagues or acquaintances might find my diabetes terms confusing. That’s one reason why I added a “diabetes dictionary” section to this website. It’s definitely not complete, but it’s a solid starting point for anyone who’s trying to understand the many acronyms and fancy-sounding medical terms that make up the language of diabetes. And a second reason, that goes hand-in-hand with that explanation, is to hopefully make it a little easier for newer readers and visitors to this website to pick up on the diabetes-related words that I use throughout most of my blog posts.

So feel free to peruse my incomplete diabetes dictionary here – I promise it’s a much shorter read compared to a traditional dictionary. And let me know in the comments if there’s anything you think I should add there, as it’s been a minute since I revisited it.

Hardly Focused on Diabetes

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This blog post is gonna hardly focus on diabetes.

But for real, this particular post isn’t so much about my diabetes and more so about my recent experience recording an episode of…the Hardly Focused Podcast.

Admittedly, I was slightly confused when my former colleague from an old job reached out and asked me to be a guest on a podcast he co-hosts. Why the confusion? Well, I wasn’t really sure what value I’d add to it seeing as it’s the first non-diabetes-related podcast that I’d be appearing on. Upon further conversation (and a little bit of my own research), I realized that the name “hardly focused” is hardly an exaggeration. The whole point of the show is to run the gamut of possible discussion topics. They’ve had guests come on to chat about everything from news, politics, sports, and pop culture, and I’ve got to say that such a varied show increased my interest because I liked that the gentlemen behind the podcast were open to talking about, well, anything.

So I agreed to join them for an episode recording, and I’m so glad that I did. I really appreciated the opportunity to talk about diabetes with people who admitted that they knew next to nothing about it. (See my most recent post for more on that topic.) I haven’t had the chance to dig into diabetes basics in a super long time, so it was a nice brush-up for me on how I choose to speak about my individual experience with it. Not to mention, it was pleasant to do so with two co-hosts who asked thoughtful questions and clearly knew how to keep a podcast interview going.

My episode of Hardly Focused will be available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to your podcasts later this week. In the meantime, check out the YouTube recording of the episode below:

An Ode to Log Books

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This was originally published on Hugging the Cactus on December 11, 2017. I’m sharing it again today because of all the outdated diabetes tools that I used to rely on, log books are something that I find myself wishing I still used, or at least kept to look back on, because they held me accountable. It’s funny how much that opinion contrasts with how I felt about them when I wrote this post! Read on for my full reflection…

Remember when log books were a THING that PWD used to track blood sugars?

Log books were pocket-size diaries (of a sort) designed for PWD to keep track of blood sugars, insulin and carb intake, mealtimes, etc. Basically, it was the old-fashioned way of recording blood sugars so that you could bring it with you to your endo appointments so your doctor could review the book for patterns.

I remember HATING having to write down my numbers. I felt like those little log books were contraptions put in place to judge me and my numbers. Imagine an eight year old who felt judged by something like that? It’s just wrong. But I get that they had a purpose to serve, and even when I was little, I knew it was important to write everything down even if I resented doing it.

That’s why I made it more fun by drawing doodles next to certain blood sugars – a frowning face would appear when I was high, and a mini burst of fireworks would find their way next to a blood sugar of 100 (which I now refer to as a unicorn bg, along with much of the rest of the DOC). I also distinctly remember using the log book to keep track of where I was injecting my insulin: “RL” would appear on the page if I was due to give a shot into my right leg, or “LA” for my left arm. These days, I’m really good about swapping sites, mainly because it’s easy to remember, thanks to my pods. But as a kid, it was more challenging, so writing it down helped.Thankful that my meter tracks my blood sugars for me now (also, that 230 mg/dL would’ve totally gotten a frown-y face back in the day).

Thank goodness for modern meters and insulin pumps that keep track of my blood sugars for me now. It’s so much easier to show up to an endo appointment and hand over my meter for the nurses to download. Plus, doing so means that my doctor and I get to review all sorts of colorful charts showing my blood sugars over a certain period of time, which is more telling and helpful than a doctor thumbing through my log book and murmuring, “I see,” every few moments.

Log books are such an archaic artifact of my diabetes history that I don’t even own any nowadays. I trashed them all, years ago, when I realized that my blood sugars from 2001 were sort of irrelevant to now. Do you still have any of your log books lying around?

Another Day, Another Annoying Diabetes Reference

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I have controversial taste in entertainment.

While I’m a huge fan of trending shows like The Last of Us and Wednesday (I recently finished both first seasons and fell in love with the characters on both shows/mourn the fact that they likely won’t produce second seasons until 2025), I’m also really into what my mother calls “trash TV”.

This is synonymous with reality television – think along the lines of anything that the Bravo network plays. Most of those shows symbolize pure escapism and innocently mindless entertainment for me, and I’m addicted, so much so that my trash taste in TV translates to my podcast listening.

I listen to a handful of podcasts hosted by personalities that either appear on the Bravo network or talk often about Bravo-lebrity drama, and while I usually find them wildly entertaining, I’ve noticed an emerging trend on these podcasts in recent months that makes me incredibly irritated. And that’s how often diabetes comes up as a topic on these podcasts.

Nine times out of ten, it’s about Ozempic (the type 2 diabetes drug that famous and non-famous folks alike have started using in order to lose weight). Usually, the podcast hosts are poking fun at it or spending way too much time speculating who is and isn’t using it, and it drives me up the wall. NOBODY is talking about the morality of taking a type 2 diabetes drug when they do not have that condition themselves, or the fact that since it’s become so popular it’s made it scarce and potentially unavailable to the people that really need it. Now, I’ll take a step off the soapbox for a second because obviously I 1) don’t have type 2 diabetes and 2) don’t use or need to use Ozempic; therefore, I don’t have a true stake in the game other than that I could imagine myself being even more worked up if it were a matter of people taking Humalog for similar reasons (goodness knows the rage that I would feel if Humalog was becoming virtually fetishized because taking it resulted in some desirable outcome).

I also shouldn’t sit here and judge people who go on Ozempic who have maybe tried multiple other weight loss methods that have failed them, and they’re genuinely using the drug to try and get healthier – I can empathize with that more. No, what really bothers me is the resulting dialogue that seems to happen every time Ozempic is brought up, and that is pure ignorant bliss regarding what diabetes actually is and how significant of a role it plays in the daily lives of people living with it. Multiple podcasts that I listen to have covered the Ozempic “fad”, explaining to their seemingly naive audiences that it’s a drug for diabetes, followed by a punch line about how they don’t even know the difference between type 1 and type 2, and saying things along the lines of how they hope they get diabetes just so they have an excuse to take Ozempic.

It’s gross. And quite frankly, embarrassing for these podcast hosts to admit that they know so little about a condition (and I’m speaking broadly here about both T1D and T2D) but then claim they want to be diagnosed with it so they can maybe indulge in their vanity and lose weight. There’s much better ways to make clever little jokes about diabetes and I’m getting tired of people being lazy in their comedy by continuing to be misinformed.

Maybe all of this is a signal to me that it’s time to take the trashy podcasts out of my rotation…

7 Questions People Always Ask Me About Type 1 Diabetes

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This was originally published on March 1, 2019 on Hugging the Cactus. I’m sharing it again today because these questions (and answers) are truly timeless: I feel like I’ve been answering them to a certain degree for the last 25 years, and I fully expect to have people continue to ask me these questions in the future. Fortunately, as someone who enjoys being a diabetes advocate, I don’t mind answering them and providing insight…but that doesn’t make some of these questions any less eyeroll-worthy. Read on to see what I mean…

Human beings are naturally curious creatures. So it’s never really surprised me when, upon discovering my T1D, people tend to ask me boatloads of questions about what it’s like. And it’s definitely not at all shocking that many of these questions are recurring.

Here’s a list of seven questions that I’m almost always asked when I encounter someone who’s just learning about my diabetes. You’ll notice a trend as you read, because even though there’s “no such thing” as a stupid question, this list kinda gets dumber as it goes on. There, you’ve been warned…

7. What does it mean when your blood sugar is high/low?
This is definitely a fair question. I never expect someone who is unfamiliar with diabetes to know the meaning of hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia. I actually kind of appreciate being asked this question, because it helps me spread awareness. The more people that know how to react in severe high or low blood sugar cases, the better, IMHO.

6. Why do you wear all of those devices?
Another decent question – I never mind explaining how my CGM and my pump work, but I do mind when people say ignorant things, like “Oh, are those patches to help you quit smoking?” *Eye roll*

5. Can you eat/drink [fill-in-the-blank]?
Ugh…I get why people ask me this, but it’s a little more tiring to explain. My answer is usually along the lines of: “I can eat or drink whatever I like, but I need to take insulin to account for it. So I try to eat a limited amount of carbs at a time, because that means I have to take less insulin, and there’s less room for error.” But even after that easy-to-understand explanation, the typical follow-up questions are “BUT CAN YOU EAT CAKE/COOKIES/ICE CREAM/ANY SUGARY FOOD?!” And that’s when I lose a bit of my patience, TBH.

4. Does it hurt when you check your blood sugar/give yourself a shot?
I mean, no? I’m not trying to be facetious or anything, but really, after 21+ years of checking blood sugar and giving myself insulin multiple times per day…there’d be a real issue if it hurt every single time. I concede that there are the occasional sites that sting, but it’s not nearly as bad as many people seem to assume.

3. What’s that beeping sound/ARE YOU GOING TO EXPLODE?!
Honestly…use common sense. What’s the likelier scenario here: That my devices have built-in alarms, or that I’m going to spontaneously combust?

2. How did you get diabetes/WHAT DID YOU DO WRONG?
This. is. such. an. ignorant. question. Nobody, myself included, did anything “wrong” that resulted in my diabetes diagnosis. I didn’t catch it and no number of lifestyle changes could have prevented me from developing diabetes. My immune system merely decided to attack and destroy the insulin-producing beta cells that lived in my pancreas. There’s no real answer as to how diabetes is caused, though genetics likely play a role in it. Don’t worry, you won’t “catch” the ‘betes by being in my presence.

1. Do you have the…bad kind of diabetes?
This question is THE WORST of them all because there is no good kind of diabetes! Gestational, type 2, LADA…none of them are favorable. They all suck. They all require constant care, regulatory medications, and endocrinology expertise. So please for the love of all that is sacred and holy, next time you hear someone ask this question, gently inform them that there’s no such thing as good/bad diabetes.

The Language of Diabetes: Is it a “Chronic Illness”, a “Disease”, or a “Condition”?

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What would you say if someone asked you to identify diabetes as one of the following: 1) a chronic illness, 2) a disease, or 3) a condition?

My response would be…it’s not so clear-cut for me. It’d change depending on how I felt about my diabetes at a given moment in time.

What word(s) would you use to identify diabetes?

So for example, on the days when diabetes dominates all of my thoughts and emotions with its unrelenting nature, I’d be more inclined to call it a chronic illness. On those occasions, my diabetes seems determined to remind me that it’s not going anywhere, and that I’d better just accept that it’s here to stay.

But when diabetes is straight-up pissing me off – say because of a medical device failure or a stubborn high blood sugar that won’t come down – I’d call it a disease. It seems to be a fitting title for something that’s acting in a disordered nature, and goodness knows it infuriates me to no end when the elements of diabetes that I can more usually control act out unpredictably.

And then it’s when diabetes and I are just mutually co-existing. I’m aware of it, and it’s aware of me, but it doesn’t have the ability to impact my emotions like it does when it’s behaving more like a chronic illness or a disease. When diabetes is my condition, I have it – it doesn’t have me.

I could be reaching a bit here with my musings on associating diabetes with different words, but truly, language is powerful in diabetes (and really, in all aspects of life). Words and phrases have connotations and significance depending on the contexts in which they’re used, making their endless combinations utterly fascinating. Because of this, I believe that examining the specific language around diabetes is extremely interesting as I think about the ways I describe my own diabetes experience and how that involves my emotions.

And what’s really cool is that there’s no right or wrong way about the words I choose to use regularly around my diabetes because it’s my story to tell. Here’s a friendly reminder that the same applies to you, too.

A Serendipitous T1D Encounter

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Sometimes, when you’re in the most random of places, surrounded by a couple of people you know but mostly strangers, but the vibe is juuuuuust right and you feel perfectly at home?

That kinda describes how I felt at…an arcade bar, of all places, on a Saturday night outing earlier this month.

I was at the local arcade bar with my boyfriend and a bunch of our friends. I always have a blast when we go there, and this particular evening was no exception. But what made it extra special was what happened when I was playing pinball.

I don’t have a picture from this particular evening, and YES I know that Galaga isn’t pinball…but it IS my favorite arcade game, and this picture also features a sunburn around an old Dexcom site…so it works well enough for this post.

I was using arguably the best pinball machine on the property (the Lord of the Rings themed one), and my favorite band from my teenage years (okay, and admittedly probably my favorite band of all time…My Chemical Romance) was blaring on the speakers. I was on cloud 9 from that alone, but then this happened: The person playing Pirates of the Caribbean pinball next to me (another excellent choice), nonchalantly said to me, “I miss my Omnipod…my insurance won’t cover it for me anymore.”

I glanced sideways at him, not wanting to lose track of my silver pinball but also wanting to show my interest in the conversation. I nodded empathetically, and said something about how insurance matters can make things so difficult. He agreed, before quickly showing me his “ancient Medtronic pump”, deftly maneuvering it from his pocket so the tubing wouldn’t get tangled around anything. I smiled and we both returned our attention back to our respective games, which we went on to play in a companionable silence.

It was totally random, not at all expected, but a sweet and subtle reminder that I’m not alone, even in places where it seems like diabetes is the last thing on anyone’s mind except mine. I hope this guy felt the same way…a little positive reassurance that we’re all in this together and doing a really great job of living well with diabetes.