Invisible

I didn't sleep very well last night.

Actually, it's more that I just didn't sleep very much.  I woke up after about 4 hours of sleep and then just couldn't fall asleep again.

Insomnia like that gives you a lot of time to think, and part of that time was spent thinking about my poor neglected blog and, naturally, a lot about diabetes.

You see, I've been having some trouble lately, but I just don't write about it.  Part of it is that I am so busy (I know, everyone is busy) and so tired and so focused on trying to get my research done and my dissertation written.  Another part of it is my blog audience.  I think most of the people who read here I actually know, family members or friends, and sometimes that prevents me from being as honest as if I were just speaking to strangers.

Isn't that weird?  Every time I try to make sense of it, I can't.

As I laid there last night, I thought about how we're in the middle of Invisible Illness Awareness Week.  I thought about my own invisible illness, how I mostly try to keep it invisible even though that can backfire sometimes.  Like that time I had a really bad low a few months back on a crowded metro in Rome.  Fortunately Nick was with me, so I leaned on him when really all I wanted (and needed) to do was sit down.  Nobody but he could tell something was wrong with me.

Pretty pictures to distract from my whinging

I recently got a new office mate at my library, a man who is at least 10 years older than me, Italian, and much  further along in his academic career than I am.  I typically eat lunch in my office, as sad as that sounds.  It takes less time, I can catch up on blogs, and eat in peace.  Now?  I don't want him to see me test my blood sugar and I DEFINITELY don't want him to see me give myself an injection.  So I wait until he leaves for lunch, test, bolus, and eat as fast as I can.  I'm staying invisible.

But back to this hard time.  Every day I am struggling with this disease.  I think part of it is the day to day stress of my life, doing long hours of research and writing, living in a foreign country, not having much money, not getting enough sleep.  Nearly every day I complain to Nick, about that stinging injection or that random 300 on my meter or the fact that I'm starving but we don't have anything I can eat without giving myself (ANOTHER) injection.

I'm still taking care of myself, still testing, still dosing, still aiming for the best every single day.  But emotionally, I feel so defeated.  Maybe it's being without my pump, losing that flexibility that I enjoyed for a year and a half.

I've been going at this now for two and a half years.  I used to be very optimistic about this disease, about the good its brought to my life.  I'm having trouble seeing things that way now, how frustrated I am, how limited I feel, even though logically I know that all of this is so silly.  Then I think about the likelihood that I'll be dealing with this the rest of my life, and I feel defeated again.

And I feel alone.  I have this incredible aunt, one who has her own invisible illness, lupus.  She's told me before that she admires how I handle my disease, I think she even mentioned once the "grace" with which I handle it.  I think I've lost some of that, but I rarely talk about it (with anyone besides Nick) because it does no good to complain and it makes others uncomfortable.

Just as I'd started to settle down last night, finally relaxing a bit into the pillow after being awake for a couple of hours, I got that feeling.  The sense of something being off, a sort of hybrid of lightness and numbness that often accompanies my hypoglycemic excursions.  I turned on my little booklight and tested: 71.  Not technically low, but I felt wrong.  And so I crawled out of bed again, sucked down a juice box, and tried not to wake up my dear husband.  Diabetes may be invisible but it never lets you forget its inconvenience.