My Diabetes Information Blogs
Always Talking to Myself
04/03/08
General
By Eric Devine
Amidst a crowded room you'll find me engaged in conversation, but more often than not, it's with myself. Typically it sounds like this:
When did I bolus last? Right, an hour ago. Should I test now? My stomach did just growl. Uh-oh, I don’t know if I have anything to treat a low. I need to find a bathroom, somewhere to test, in private.
Such is the life for someone always on guard, someone hyper-vigilant, someone navigating the daily obstacle course of diabetes.
The obvious problem with this mental Q&A is the inability to focus externally. I am often, quite literally, locked inside my head. I’m either having a conversation like the one above, or I’m doing math, converting bolus units and adjusting basal rate amounts while trying to appear completely normal.
It’s exhausting and typically a failure, because inevitably someone will ask me a question or try to engage me in conversation, and the struggle to pull my mind out of wherever I was, is visibly taxing. I often have to ask for questions or statements to be repeated, which makes me appear as if I’m disengaged or simply uninterested. People have dismissed me on appearance alone, assuming my countenance to be an image of aloofness or boredom, when really, I’m just thinking.
It seems obvious that I should simply get out of my head and speak what’s on my mind. But imagine that conversation. Who would want to listen to this?
“So, Eric, let me tell you about our vacation,” he says.
Long pause and then my head snaps. My eyes are glazed and opaque. “All right,” I respond.
His brow furrows, and he then asks, “You sure, you seem—I don’t know—not really into it.”
I try to focus and sound empathetic. “No, go on. Really.”
“Um, ok," he conintues. "So have you ever been to the Caribbean?”
“Yeah, once. But hey, before you get started, I was thinking, if I’m going to help clean up around here afterward, do you think I should reduce my basal rate now, or eat a little something just before? You know, so that I don’t go low?”
Now, his turn for the long uncomfortable pause. “What?”
You understand the point: no one wants to hear this, and quite frankly, neither do I. But I can’t escape myself. Therefore, I’m in a paradox of self-care, where I need to engage, fairly deeply, with my body’s mechanism, in order to make up for its lack of ability, all so I can appear “regular.” Yet, while I do so, I completely ostracize myself from true, normal society.
The answer then…wait, I was busy thinking.
Right, the answer—there isn’t one. I’ve come to accept that in order to be healthy I need to commune with the voice inside my head. If that makes others feel left out or separates me from the norm, so be it. I’ve been out of the loop for long enough as it is. I’m sorry; this is one conversation that is truly better left to me, alone.