Lifelong

Sometimes I despise diabetes. When my blood sugar is high, when I can't keep my blood sugar up, when my site rips out and falls onto the floor, when I use my last test strip while I am out and wish I had one more... there are so many reasons to despise the disease that takes up a large chunk of my mental capacity, but in the same breath, I am so thankful for diabetes.

It's such an odd saying and I've said it so many times, I think I forget the significance of why I say it, but last night reconfirmed why I seriously am so thankful.   I have been so lucky to meet amazing friends through diabetes and often times I think of it in a global sense, I have been so lucky to travel the world to be with other people living with diabetes, but in reality, I have my own lifelong diabetes friends that live very close to me... I mean, a couple hours away, but way closer than across the world and I am so thankful that I get to connect with these people.

Last night, my friend Dani was in town and I invited her to check out my Empowerment group that I run weekly with teen girls from my community.  Dani had been to one of these events before, but she was lucky, we had a full house of teens buzzing with excitement. She got to meet the girls that I spend an hour with every week and I was so happy that she got to be apart of the magic of my diabetes support group. Then, she came by my house, we have recently moved, so I was excited to show her my new home.    But, beyond it all, I was so happy to be around someone with diabetes, who gets it, who has been there for me for many years and who happens to wear the exact same pump as I do (purple and proud!)

It's the little conversations between one another that mean the most, the reassuring that feeling of, 'I get it. Don't worry.' I probably could spend hours just dishing out my feelings to her, person to person, and really venting about the frustrations of living with diabetes.  Seeing her pump tubing coming out of her pocket, her pump falling out of her coat jacket, or her going to check her blood sugar because she felt low.... all of these things that take up my day, take up my time, take up my strength, all of these things that she does too.

I am so incredibly thankful because, I have many friends that live with type 1 diabetes who I know I would have never met otherwise.  These people are incredible inside and out and despite us sharing the same disease, we share a friendship that can't quite compare to any other.

Kayla