Diabetic Angst

Being diabetic is hard. But I would never tell people that when they ask me general questions that belie the small amount of worry they feel over the matter, and I don't want them to feel anymore than they should. It's a painful affliction, partly because it's as mentally taxing with its presence as it is physically, ripping out kidneys and eyes and gangrene limbs via a surgeon's scalpel and skilled, tired hands. What's most important, however, is to not think of the future, and the vitality lost from my body to the disease. Much better to think about the now, concentrating on keeping the sugar in my blood as unconcentrated and subdued as possible. Who would have guessed that the sugar in Coca-Cola that makes kids around the world giggle and laugh, euphoric in summertime heat waves with their soda confections, that sugar which brings smiles to humanity's refined palate, that simple sugar, which through photosynthesis has given humanity's home planet life, that sugar, that very sugar. Who could have guessed that it would be the chemical that would most threaten my very existence. Mine, but not mine alone. Though most of the time it seems that way, as people shove it down their gaping maws, it disguised as a benign kitchen staple--an ear of corn, a glass of orange juice, that citrus killer. And I watch helplessly. Either eat it of die. Eat it, to be condemned to a life without the sensory pleasures of touch and sight when hands and eyes are removed from me. But eat I must, for a slow death is better than a death that removes life from me so early in my youth. Life no longer holds as many simple pleasures as it used to, as if this disease super saturated the threads of my happiness. The jolly jingle of an ice cream truck makes me wary of the needles bursting with insulin into my flesh to neutralize the sugar of a dolled up freeze pop. A birthday cake is a trap, with hidden carbs folded into the seams between frosting and pastry. Even an nonthreatening apple, that which is recommended by doctors and dentists alike, that which with every bite I could be terrifically satisfied by the thick crush of molars mashing apple meat, has its menacing surprises in the form of a glucose level spike. So yes, as hard as it may be to wake up to a world without sound, or have all the world's colors taken from your sight, that is how hard it is to be diabetic. It's the realization that everything you need for survival and want for added luxury, is killing you, but slowly, so the entire battle into death can be witnessed by a guilty consciousness that blames only itself for that extra slice of birthday cake, those days when it valued fun over the bland metering of blood sugar, and never fully understanding the predicament, the gravity of it until, down a leg to stand on, and perfect 20/20 vision, the everything becomes understood. This is a disease, not a temporary affliction. This is not the flu that makes you shake and shiver. It's the disease that sends its sufferers to an early wake, sans liver. One can only pray in God and man to find a cure before you must watch your life in slow motion, attached to a dialysis machine, waiting a kidney transplant from someone more fortunate than you, someone who has died already.