As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been a great deal of discussion lately about what it means to be a diabetic and how we as type 1s and type 2s self-identify with our disorders.  It's come as part of a larger (and, in my opinion, 100% stupid) dialogue about which is worse, type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

I was going to make a joke here, something like "My answer is type 2, because I don't have type 1, ba-DUM!"  But the thing is, it's not entirely a joke, when you think about it.

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It's been an odd few weeks here on the Beedies front.  When my doctor sent me to see the endocrinologist a few weeks ago, it was with the grim admonishment that I was most likely going to have to go on insulin.  My comfortable little world of better living through pharmaceuticals was going to be swept away, and in its place I would find myself trudging through a grim dystopia of syringes in my bathroom, sad little bottles in the butter tray of my fridge and a pocketful of Jolly Ranchers to fend off hypoglycemic death.

I am perhaps overstating the possible state of affairs.

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As a part of Diabetes Awareness Month, today is apparently D-Blog Day. On this day in 1944, diabetes bloggers stormed the beach at Normandy and made the world safe for democracy. Or something like that; I should go look it up.

Anyway, to commemorate the occasion, diabetes bloggers have been asked to unite on a single topic. This year, that topic is "Six things you want people to know about diabetes". So here we go.

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One day. I'll learn to start listening to that voice, the one that occasionally gives me advice, the voice that I largely ignore. It's a tiny little internal voice, coming (I presume) from a tiny little internal smart guy. In my imagination, he dresses much better than I do.

Let's call him... Tiny Rob.

Now, to be fair, Tiny Rob has a pretty spotty record. Sure, he may have been the one who sent me to the doctor five years ago, but he's taken more on-the-job vacations since then than George W. Bush. Tiny Rob has left me to my own devices for months at a stretch, only popping by occasionally to ask, "So, what'd I miss?"

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For a variety of reasons that all add up to a perfect storm of unfortunate for yours truly, I have gone off my diabetes medications and shall be off of them for a few days. I ran out of both at the same time, and it happened on a weekend, and a holiday weekend, no less, so there was no one at my doctor's office to call. Furthermore, if I'd been paying attention (and really, why would I? It's only my health we're talking about here), I would have seen that I had no more refills on my prescription, meaning that in order to get more, I would need to make an appointment and go in to see my doctor again, which of course I should have done a few months ago, but my book came out and I've been busy being Mister Fancy Pants, etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah. Really, there are a number of excuses, but they all come down to my own personal dedication to being the very best cautionary tale I can be for the rest of you. No need to thank me, I do it out of love. (READ MORE)

As Type 2 diabetics, we're often told that the best thing we can do for ourselves is lose weight. And that's undeniably true. But no one tells you ahead of time how weird that process can be.

Now, I write about my own weight struggle a lot, so perhaps it's time for me to own up to some actual numbers. I'm not an "alert the media" level fat guy. When I was diagnosed with diabetes almost two years ago, I went on a panic-and-phentermine-fuled weight loss frenzy, and I lost about thirty pounds. At 6'2", I got down to about 205 pounds. So not Jude Law, but not Jabba the Hutt, either.

This was quite a difference from the worst of my college days, when I weighed (and I can't believe this, even as I type it) about 280 pounds. I was a mess, a big sloppy boozy lummox. I'd managed to lose about thirty of those pounds before I was even diagnosed, because let's face it, Dean Wormer in Animal House was right. "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." (READ MORE)