Diabetes Blog Week 2017 Day 4: What Brings Me Down

We’re going to go back to a past blog week topic from 2014. May is Mental Health Month so now seems like a great time to explore the emotional side of living with, or caring for someone with, diabetes. What things can make dealing with diabetes an emotional issue for you and / or your loved one, and how do you cope? (Thanks again to Scott for this 2014 topic.)

This is the second time this prompt has appeared, and it’s the second time my initial reaction has been to parody ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down.” This time, I actually did it.

When I go high, it’s like I’m out of my mind

I work so hard but still I’m wasting my time

It brings me down, diabetes down

They tell me do more, I’d rather lie on the floor,

D brings me down

I wanna go out and be with my friends

A hypo brings fun to a crashing end

It brings me down, diabetes down

I try to ignore, but it’s an internal war

D brings me down

Don’t bring me down, D don’t bring me down

Don’t bring me down, D don’t bring me down

You throw out all the things you used to know

MacGuyvering a dead pump on the road*

It brings me down, diabetes down

You rush for the door, before they close the drugstore

D brings me down

You’re causing way too many sleepless nights

I’ll only wake up if the dose is right

That brings me down, diabetes down

Can’t help but implore, what am I doing this for?

D brings me down

Don’t bring me down, D don’t bring me down

Don’t bring me down, D don’t bring me down

A balance shattered like a fragile glass

It’s not just figurative pain in the ass

That brings me down, diabetes down

A panic and bore, it’s just a gigantic chore

D brings me down

You’ve got me shakin’ – am I low, or just mad?

You’ve got me breakin’ the control that I had

It brings me down, diabetes down

Much as I abhor it I just have to endure

It brings me down!

*On Tuesday, I went to Kitchener, which is between 1-2 hours away by car depending on traffic, to rehearse for an upcoming performance with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. My pump buzzed “low battery” on the way there, but I generally get between two days and a week between the first buzz and battery death. This time, though, it died only hours later, during rehearsal break! I had just eaten a brownie and was about to bolus for it. Normally I have an extra vial of insulin and a syringe, but I’d just put all my insulin in my pump cartridge, so I had to find something to act as a receptacle and squeeze out enough insulin from the cartridge to slurp up with a syringe. Then I was still an hour away from being done with rehearsal, between 1-2 hours away from being home, in an unfamiliar city where most things were closed, and with no car of my own (I don’t drive and I carpooled). I just had to tough it out and wait to get home. Talk about bringing me down – it was infuriating.