My reality check

I’ve mentioned in several recent blogs about the “bad days” that I have been having…

Well, yesterday came with a reality check.  You know how you know things about yourself that you don’t tell other people.  I haven’t been feeling 100% but it’s easy to push past the feelings and continue doing what I do.  The vision get a little blurred but I close my eyes and refocus.  I tinkle five times more than average but working from home, no one knows.  A little numbness in my legs and tingling in my fingers, it all goes away after a while.  I tell myself that I have to stay mentally tough and keep moving forward because it is easy to hide what ails you with a smile and a kind word for someone else.

As most of you know, I have diabetes. I wish I could say that I am a good diabetic but I am not.  I have an insatiable sweet tooth for cookies and cake.  I don’t count my carbs and some days I forget to take my insulin.  I guess I had a superwoman complex and didn’t really believe that those things would affect me.  However, part of me knows differently but just won’t admit it.

Well… there are some things like doctor’s appointments and blood work that make it hard for you to avoid the truth.  The sick (no pun intended) thing about diabetes is that it has the power to kill you from within by a variety of means, nerve damage, heart damage, kidney damage, even a loss of eye sight.  Needless to say, my lack of care for myself has made me vulnerable on all fronts.

I spent most of the day crying because it dawned on me exactly how serious the problem is.  The crazy thing is that I have “known” all along but it just didn’t really seem like it would happen to me.  I didn’t really believe that I could be susceptible to any of these conditions, after all isn’t having the disease and being relegated to a life of daily insulin shots enough? Apparently not, especially if I’m not taking the insulin regularly.

I feel like I am always giving advice to others, trying to take care of everyone else and making sure they are living their best life that I forgot about taking care of myself. Every time I looked at my son, I got a reality check about what’s really important.  I realized that no matter how many times I tell him that I love him, kiss  him or hug him that I didn’t know how many would be enough to last his lifetime.  I thought about all of the milestones to come in his life and realized how important it is for me to be healthy and alive to share them with him.

Yep, my doctor’s visit yesterday was a serious reality check for me.  I have to go back next week for a follow-up but I already know that we have some “issues” to deal with but moving forward, I have to commit to doing better.

You see living young and fabulous isn’t about having a bunch of stuff, going to great parties or being a trendsetter.  On the outside, many people look like they have it going on but on the inside there are some things that each of us are battling.  I am committed to winning the war with diabetes, if not for myself then for my son because living young and fabulous is most of all about living.