It’s Diabetes Awareness Day. It isn't pink or sexy, it doesn't involve boobs, football players, or cute shirts. It’s about being grateful when your loved one wakes up in the morning. Its about 3:00 am blood checks, needles, low blood sugars, and the smell of insulin on your hands after changing a pump site or filling a syringe. That’s a person with diabetes’s life. Re-blog if you love someone, know someone, or are someone with diabetes ♥
A PSA from someone with Type 1 Diabetes
If you see someone in a restaurant, in your home, at a party, wherever, who is injecting insulin, DO NOT:
- Ask them to do that in the bathroom/somewhere private
- Tell them that their behavior is inappropriate for being in public, and that they should be more considerate because some people are squeamish or afraid of needles
- Scream loudly about your terror of needles and oh god how could you do that in front of meeee
- Say anything about hating needles in general, look with disgust at them or generally talk about how needles suck
- Tell them that they should go on the pump so that they wouldn’t have to embarrass themselves in public like this
You’re allowed to hate needles. That’s fine. I just don’t want to fucking hear about it. I don’t want you to scream at something that is as fundamental to my life as breathing. And no, I’m not going to hide myself away in the bathroom and pretend like my diabetes doesn’t exist for the sake of your comfort. Here’s a tip: If you don’t like watching people take shots, DON’T FUCKING WATCH PEOPLE TAKE SHOTS. There are literally 359 degrees of other fucking places you can look when someone is injecting insulin. It’s not their responsibility to hide so that you don’t stare at them (which you shouldn’t be doing anyway).
I’m not giving myself a shot to gross you out. I’m injecting insulin because if I don’t, I will literally die. This is a part of my life. When you talk about how much needles suck, you’re telling me that the thing that is keeping me alive sucks.
Imagine you see someone in a wheelchair, and you say to them, “Oh my god, wheelchairs are SOOOO terrible! How can you stand being in a wheelchair ALL. DAY. LONG? I would hate myself!” And they would probably tell you that that’s kind of fucked up to say, and that they’re perfectly happy being in a wheelchair. And you could respond, “Oh well no it’s fine for YOU, I don’t care that OTHER people are in wheel chairs, I just can’t IMAGINE ever having to deal with that myself.” Sounds pretty degrading huh? What’s so special about you that you could never see yourself in as undignified a place as a wheelchair? HEAVEN FORBID.
But that’s exactly what you’re doing when you complain about needles. You’re saying that you couldn’t possibly stand dealing with something that is keeping me alive, that instead of being a miracle of modern medicine, my shots are a burden and degrading and downright intolerable, and finally that you, an able-bodied healthy individual are creating an infinite divide between you and me, that you could never see yourself in my position, and that there is something DIFFERENT about me that makes my lifestyle possible.
You and I both eat food and breathe to not die. I happen to inject insulin to not die. Guess what? If you had to inject insulin to stay alive, you’d get over your fear of shots pretty fucking quick. This isn’t about being afraid of shots. This is about you learning to keep your mouth shut when other people offend your sensibilities with their existence.
You know...
I think it’s absolutely incredible that autism awareness gets a lot of support, but I’m sorry… I can’t help but feel upset when I see all these other serious illnesses getting so much support from all my friends and family, but diabetes is somehow made into a joke. I’m not saying that autism and cancer and other diseases don’t deserve that support, because they absolutely do! But here’s the thing…
I never see somebody on facebook mentioning diabetes awareness month in November, but I ALWAYS see people cracking jokes about sugar giving them “diabeetus.” It’s not fucking funny anymore. It’s just getting really old. This disease has seriously taken its toll on my life; it wears and tears on me every single day, and it will continue to do so for as long as I live… and yet nobody notices, cares, or even attempts to sympathize. I wish diabetes could just get the support it deserves. I just will never be able to understand why others think it’s okay to pick on people suffering from an incurable, unpreventable disease. What’s so funny about kidney failure? Or blindness? Or losing limbs? Or diabulimia? Or just constantly feeling like shit day after day after day? I’d like to have a little support once in a while too, but apparently that’s too much to ask.
Top 10 Annoying Things People Say
“Does it hurt?”
Of course poking myself with a needle hurts sometimes, and you never really get used to it no matter how long you have had diabetes.
“You can’t eat that, you have diabetes!”
I know what I can and can’t eat! Limiting sweets can help me keep my blood sugar under control, but as long as I adjust my insulin I can eat them just like people without diabetes.
“Do you think you should eat something?”
I appreciate your concern, but I’ve been living with type 1 diabetes for some time now. Unless I’ve already asked you to watch me for specific symptoms and remind me to eat, I can decide when and what to eat on my own.
“Did you get diabetes because you ate too much sugar as a child?”
Eating too much sugar is not a cause of type 1 diabetes. I didn’t do anything to cause my diabetes.
“I know all about diabetes, so here’s what you need to do…”
Just because you’re older than me or have more education doesn’t mean you know more than I do about diabetes. I’ve been living with this disease for many years, so don’t you think I know more about it than you?
“You’re so skinny, how could you have diabetes?”
Obesity can be a trigger for type 2 diabetes, but it has nothing to do with type 1.
“I have type 2 diabetes, so I know how you feel.”
No, you don’t. People with type 2 diabetes may be able to control their disease with diet and exercise alone, or oral medications. We type 1s have had to inject insulin since the day we were diagnosed.
“Insulin can cure your diabetes, right?”
Taking insulin keeps people with type 1 diabetes alive, but does not cure the disease. While progress has been made, there is still no cure for diabetes.
“How come your blood sugar is always too high or too low? Are you doing something wrong?”
Many factors can easily cause my blood sugars to swing out of control no matter how well I follow my meal plan and insulin schedule. It does not mean I’ve done something wrong.
“Can’t you get rid of your diabetes if you just exercise and eat right?”
If I could, don’t you think I would have done that by now? Type 1 diabetes is not caused by a poor diet, obesity, or lack of exercise. Those are factors associated with type 2 diabetes. Exercise and a good diet can help me to better control my type 1 diabetes, but they do not make it go away.
http://juvenation.org/resources/educating_others/default.aspx
The Making of FunnyBugs.org
Funny Bugs is a non-profit endeavor our family has been working on over the past several months. We think kids with Type 1 diabetes deserve a fun, educational, and social experience for managing their diabetes and helping others do the same. We’re making plans to build that experience in our (very) limited spare time.
Our 7-year-old son, a Type 1 diabetic, has been the chieftain of the project. Funny Bugs is literally a product of his imagination. The name, the ideas for an app, and the initial rough sketches of bugs that are [insert obvious adjective] are all his.
The bumble bee you see on the site, based on our son’s sketches above, is the handiwork of Jacob Souva. His initial sketch was exactly the direction we were seeking:
A few rounds of refining and texturizing led to the final raster image featured on the site. We couldn’t be happier with the result. The logo, which I designed, has a hidden smiley face in it. Can you spot it?
As for the site, it has all the requisite bells and whistles for an HTML5/CSS3 experience: Modernizr, @font-face, parallax, CSS3 animations, and a few other tricks. This is the first site I’ve coded from start to finish in some time, as all front-end markup and styling for Authentic Jobs these days is in the very capable hands of Ben Bodien. I think I managed alright on my own.
The bee animation required some deft animation, which is currently supported only by WebKit browsers. The wings are a separate image from the body, allowing them to be animated by simply changing the opacity from 0 to 1:
@keyframes flap {
0% {opacity: 0;}
100% {opacity: 1;}
}
0% is the first keyframe of the animation. The second is 100%, or the ending frame. flap is the name I assigned to the animation. This name is referenced as follows:
.bee-wings {
position: absolute;
z-index: 1;
animation: flap 100ms infinite;
}
With a speed of 100ms and the animation set to infinite, the result is that the wing image shifts rapidly from fully transparent to fully opaque, making it appear as if the wings are flapping.
Note also the absolute positioning with a z-index of 1. This allows the wing image to appear behind the body image. The body image is given a value of 2, stacking it above the wing image:
.bee-body {
position: absolute;
z-index: 2;
}
The body image and wing image are wrapped in a div with the class name bee, and the entire div is animated as follows:
@keyframes flight {
0% {top: 0;}
50% {top: 15px;}
100% {top: 0;}
}
Here the div begins at the default position on the page in the first keyframe. The second keyframe, 50%, pushes the div down 15 px. The final key frame, 100%, returns the div to the default position.
To execute the animation, here’s how the div is styled:
.bee {
animation: flight 2s infinite cubic-bezier(0.295, 0, 0.71, 1.0);
}
flight is the reference name I chose for the animation, 2 seconds is the duration of the animation, and infinite loops the animation. The final value, easing, is a custom value I created using Matthew Lein’s Ceaser animation tool.
And that was that. I would have enjoyed the challenge of making the design responsive, but I was out of time. We had a walkathon to attend the day after I pushed the site live:
I bet you can’t guess who chose the key lime color for the Funny Bugs tees.
