Danielle Sutherland

getting to stab yourself with needles all the time for fun! except not for fun, but to keep you alive

that one oral med you’re on? yeah sometimes it’s just gonna give you diarrhea lol have fun figuring out when

your whole body being hot and cold at the same time. like you’re cold, but you’re overheated and you want to take your shirt off but if you do you get massive chills and there’s no winning

walking up the stairs when your sugar is high? more like you’ve never done squats that burn this much

really bad circulation in your extremities. like your torso is hot but your toes are fucking freezing as hell.

being told that your kidney function is “thankfully still okay” or that “you don’t have retinopathy yet”

stumbling to the kitchen in the middle of the night and having to decide which food will work best to treat a low when your brain doesn’t work and your body doesn’t work and if you don’t pick fast enough you’ll pass out and maybe die

going to bed in range and waking up feeling like hell on earth

dealing with shit like this:

and this

having to force yourself to drink water when you’re really really nauseated and want to throw up everything in your stomach. nausea so bad water makes you want to puke

ppl telling you it takes 15 minutes to recover from a low when it’s more like 2 hours before you feel like your previous self (and recovery from a really bad high takes like 3 days)

an achey body for no good reason

friends being like “we should work out together” but you’re like “how tf do I manage my blood sugar while I’m doing that”

having to push through and still go to work/school when you feel like shit

things that hurt. those pump sites and injections that feel like you’ve been stabbed. your body begging you to feed it. your eyes. your muscles. your head. your stomach. your lungs. everything hurts.

having to hear diabetes jokes “lol it was so sweet it gave me diabetes” “omg it’s like a big bowl of diabetes” SHUT THE FUCK UP THATS NOT HOW DIABETES WORKS YOU PIECE OF SHIT but having to hear it and stay calm

losing the ability to tell when you’re low so lol you’re in the 30’s and you only just realized

having to stop having fun or hanging out with people or having to go home because you’re out of insulin or strips or needles or your site fill out. and by extension, never really being able to do something spontaneous because you always have to think how will i manage the sugaz when I do

always worrying about food. where it’ll come from, how to count it, where you can get some of you suddenly drop. food is your biological imperative. if you can’t answer those questions you’re this much closer to dying.

you don’t even know who you are without this disease. you know it’s not everything about you but it consumes you. literally. it eats away at your body, eats away at how long you have left to live.

having to deal with the monetary cost. like, pay or die? what kind of life is that?