I know that everyone here has at some point had someone say something ridiculous, silly, offensive, or downright ignorant about their diabetes.
I go to classes at a dance studio and was at a social function there this weekend. I am currently doing MDI (I’m on a “pump vacation”) and wear a Dexcom. I needed to give myself a shot so I went to the back of studio where there weren’t many people and did it there. When I turned around, my dance teacher was in front of me, kind of standing in a way as if to shield me from others seeing, and commented that the bathroom was available. I shrugged and said that I don’t really care who sees me giving myself a shot - this is something I grew up with and I got over the embarrassment a long time ago. His reaction gave me the impression that me giving myself a shot in public made him uncomfortable. He then compared it to him being embarrassed when he went bald, but now he is okay with it.
I mean… okay. But, being bald is socially acceptable for men, and I can’t imagine anyone has ever commented on it. I’m not discounting his experience here, and I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but the whole experience left me feeling like he thought that I should be embarrassed by my diabetes, or what I have to do to take care of myself.
I normally let these kinds of comments go in one ear and out the other, but they’re usually of the “you can’t eat that” variety. It’s been a while since someone implied that I should be embarrassed or hide myself.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with some people who can relate.
I’m sorry that happened. Some people act like you’re gonna poke them when they see a needle.
In middle school our lunch aide insisted a few times that I needed to go to the nurse’s office to give my shots. I don’t know if it was for privacy or what. I had never, ever been to the nurse’s office though. So my friends just started making a human wall around me at the beginning of lunch, and then we’d all sit down after I gave my shot. The aide never bothered me about it again.
Right? I hate going into the bathroom to change my pump site at work!
No sanitary surfaces to set things down on, so my pockets and hands always end up full of wipes, and sprays, and hope, and the Autosoft inserter, and the inserter cap, and trying not to bend the cannula needle while closing the door, and do the rest one-handed, and make sure to pack out all the little parts and pieces again without dropping anything…
I remember when I was young, under 20, I’d always go to the bathroom to shoot up. It was a vial of insulin and thank some possible god a disposable syringe (which I never disposed of, being a heathen.) I sat on the toilet in the ironically unsanitary surroundings, drew insulin into my somewhat blunt syringe and then did the dance…
Think about it; I’m holding a syringe, a bottle of insulin and my pants are down round my ankles (because if you don’t start out that way there is no way the dance will ever work). I need to grab some part of my skin, squeeze it, and with the hand holding the syringe and just that hand depress the plunger. Count my hands.
Oops, I should have put the insulin back in my pocket, but my pockets are on the scummy floor somewhere in the vicinity of my ankles. Oh, and there’s the cap for the insulin syringe which I have to reapply so I can reuse it safely.
Nevertheless I’m not dead so as a person with infinite arrogance I can assert that everyone can do this without dying as a result. [That is sarcasm.]
All the same it hardly ever happens that someone is more arrogant than I am. Hum, it’s never happened; in my youth I just felt in my shrunken persona that it might so I must hide under this toilet seat to do my insulin. These days I just take my medicine in public and wait for someone to complain; I think that’s kinda like the place we all need to be. Diabetes, stomas, breast feeding.
