10 Things I Hate About You, Diabetes

This is the one day this year that I'm going to completely bitch about this damn disease I've been dealing with for nearly 57.6% of my life. WARNING: Curse words may be included in items #9 and 10!!

1. I hate that slightly more than 25 1/2 years ago, I was robbed of a great freshman year of college because of my diagnosis with you.
2. I hate that for nearly 10 years after my diagnosis with you, I did not properly monitor you and that I will dearly pay for that later in life with the people that mean the most to me.
3. I hate the still occasional feeling of guilt that comes with treating a low because I was told "You can't eat/drink that" so many times by medical professionals back in the mid 1980's.
4. I hate being asked if I'm going to shave during a business meeting when I pull out my rather large bag that contains my Type 1 testing paraphernalia.
5. I hate that one single test strip to an uninsured individual cost nearly $1 to tell them if they're OK at that particular moment in time.
6. I hate putting too little blood on said test strip and getting the all too often Err symbol and wasting a perfectly good $1.
7. I hate not being able to do anything fun on a whim.
8. I hate thinking I've done everything properly to prepare for a workout routine only to be told by my machine that I'm either too high or to low.
9. I hate not being able to look my two sons, ages nine and five, directly in the eyes and tell them they are NOT going to have to deal personally with this fucking disease at some point in the future.
10. I hate looking in the mirror each day I wake up because of the events that transpired in late April of 1992. You see Diabetes, that is when you physically changed the appearance of my face when you thought it would be OK to let me get behind the wheel of my car after a very long day of both school and work. The Reader's Digest condensed version of the story is that I totaled my Volvo on that evening more than 19 years ago in Greensboro, NC as I hit an embankment when I ran through an intersection at more than 35 miles per hour because I was driving around in a Diabetic coma. My face hit the steering wheel between the top of my nose and my forehead shattering every bone around my eye sockets to where the doctors, who operated on me three days after the accident due to the extreme swelling, had to literally stitch them back together. So needless to say my physical facial appearance was altered somewhat and for that Type 1 Diabetes, I fucking hate you very much!

Now the funny thing about all of this is that most people will tell you that I'm an extremely positive person when it comes to 99.99% of things. But when I saw this topic today, I just couldn't resist and felt it would be a good way to vent/rant/bitch/complain.

There are many things in life I'm very thankful for, with the love and support of my immediate family being first and foremost. But as many have said before, and will continue to do so in the future, this disease is mind numbingly brutal each and every day that we endure it. It's how we endure it as an active online community that makes each one of us special in our own way.