hawken.dadako

My dad. Two childhood friends. My best friend’s sister. My ex-boyfriend’s father. Even my aunt’s cat. It seems that everywhere I turn diabetes is following me. As I progress through life, one by one people along the way are being diagnosed with diabetes.

I understand that having any type of disease or syndrome causes you to become more aware when people mention that specific disease or syndrome. But sometimes, it seems that diabetes isn’t just on my mind. It’s literally following me, taking down people in its path (or in my path).

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Outsmarted

When I’m standing in the check-out line at the food store with ketone strips in my hand after a long night of high blood sugars, the very last thing I want to see amongst the Tic Tacs and tabloids, is a little magazine called Outsmart Diabetes.

Really now. Outsmart diabetes? If only I was just smarter. These last six-and-a-half years could have been so dramatically different. Reverse Diabetes with Food? Being that ninety percent of my son's diet has a negative effect on his blood sugar, reversing his disease with food is highly unlikely. When he eats a slice of watermelon, there's no reversing. Just fast-forwarding to ungodly highs. Yes, of course I know the magazine is referring to type 2 diabetes. Then why not say so? Outsmart Type 2 Diabetes. Would that be so difficult?

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An old adage suggests there is strength in numbers.

Not the numbers of our ABCs -- although there is strength in that knowledge -- but the strength of many people, standing together, for the same cause.

Many people making the same choice made Jesse Ventura -- a third-party candidate -- governor of Minnesota, and Abraham Lincoln -- also a third-party candidate -- President of the United States.

Many people speaking out on television and in the media made everyone aware of AIDS and of Breast Cancer -- even though those two diseases kill and disable far fewer people than heart disease and diabetes.

Why is it, then, that hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users turned their avatars red for World AIDS day, or green to support the protesters after the Iranian election, but not blue to support World Diabetes Day?

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In my last post, I posed the question of why diabetes has not been as high in the general public's awareness as breast cancer, AIDS, or even the Iranian election earlier this year. I left off quoting Christopher Thomas of Diabetic Rockstar, saying "we can't even decide on a color [to represent diabetes awareness]."

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Every November, those of us in the diabetes community bewail the "invisibility" of our condition, our passion, our advocacy over the remaining eleven months of the year. One of our ongoing gripes is that -- unlike breast cancer's pink ribbon, the red ribbon of AIDS awareness, Livestrong's iconic yellow wristband, or the double-cross of the American Lung Association -- there is no single, universally-recognized symbol or color representing diabetes.

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It's unusual for me to have nightmares — especially nightmares about flying. Mine are usually about family relationships gone completely awry. But facing a World Diabetes Day on which I am working at a place whose uniform does not allow even a touch of blue, having given Nick Jonas my last World Diabetes Day pin (and not having had the money to replenish my stash), and having failed to have the presence of mind to do the Big Blue Test at least once (even though I am bicycling to and from work at least half the time), I feel a bit like a diabetes failure. (READ MORE)