This morning, getting ready for work. I looked at the scattering of dots on my thighs from old pump sites. And then I wrote this...

We test, we write it down - we test, we store results - we test, we examine results - we test, we make decisions about what to do next.

We eat, we calculate - we eat, we guess - we eat, we dose - we eat, we hold our breath and hope we've done everything right.

We take our medication, we adjust our doses - we take our medication, we wonder if it's the very best medicine for us - we take our medication, we hope that it serves our body well - we take our medication, and wait for the next big advance.

We exercise, we watch our levels like a hawk - we exercise, balancing our food and medication just as precariously as we balance ourselves in whatever activity we're doing - we exercise, and hope we don't bottom out or spike up.

We do all of these things, like a pen in a hand, connecting dots on paper. If the hand is perfectly steady, the picture it creates will be perfect - beautiful. If the hand shakes or moves in the wrong direction, the picture it creates will have some rickety lines.

My hand is often quakey. And the picture of my life with diabetes isn't even close to perfect. Often, I know the dots are supposed to form a unicorn and instead they form a dinosaur.

And I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know that life, in general, is an imperfect science - a constant exercise in artistic abstracts and symbolism. Diabetes just adds another layer - it adds expectations - and pressure - around what a life lived perfectly with this disease would look like.

I (and we) can only try our damnedest to connect the dots in a way that creates the picture we want to see.

I'm doing my best, and hoping that someday the picture of my diabetes life might start to look less like a dinosaur and more like a horse with a horn.