An Artificial Life!

It's sometimes scary to think that the only reason I'm here today is because I am pumping an artificially made, synthetic hormone into my body.

When I was 11 my body simply stopped making its own causing me to eat like a pig but lose weight, have unquenchable thirst and even wet the bed even though I had no history of it. If the discovery of insulin hadn't been made, then my parents would've had to bury me at the tender age of eleven. I watch these end of days movies with their floods and meteors and think to myself, even if I were to somehow survive all the initial destruction and terror of a natural disaster and find myself on a mountain somewhere, I would only survive until my insulin supply ran out. Scary huh?

In fact even my cat almost killed me. I have an insulin pump which is a little machine about the size of a pager that I clip only my side, belt, underwear, whatever and it has a tube that connects a reservoir of insulin to a cannula inserted into my stomach. It is programed to give me preset amounts of insulin throughout the day......think of an IV, same idea with insulin but the needle is just under the skin, not in a vein. So on this one day in my past, I woke up in the morning feeling sick to my stomach, go to the bathroom and throw up, then I smell something. I know the distinct smell of insulin anywhere so I look at my pump and follow the tubing that connects it to me, it's severed! My cat, who was a kitten at the time, snuck under the bedsheets while I was sleeping and chewed through the tubing. I checked my sugar.........29! I figured that I was disconnected from my pump for a few hours for it to be that high, I was lucky to even wake up at all. Luckily I was able to manage it on my own, gave myself a huge dose of insulin and went back to bed until it was down to normal. The cat doesn't sleep with me anymore!

I used to have the poor me's, always asking why do I have this? Why do I feel like this? Is this as good as it's going to get? I've had to remind myself about how very lucky I am to live in a time with insulin, how I've managed to live 21 years with this disease and to never have been admitted to a hospital for it other than the very beginning when I was 11. I was born to a nurse who was head nurse of the Kidney dialysis ward in her past and knew exactly what could happen to me and made sure I was taken care of. I've managed to carry and give birth to three beautiful children when not too long ago they wouldn't even recommend a diabetic have a baby. I've seen and heard numerous stories of young people having life long complications due to their diabetes and yet I have none.

I feel truly blessed!