It's like brushing your teeth...only not

Today I had a brief, but definitely there diabetes burnout moment.  Add on the fact that I was low and incredibly emotional and you've got a total disaster.  So I was laying in my bed having a diabetes sucks moment which have been coming frequently enough so that I don't go insane, but rare enough that everyone doesn't know I hate it.  Frankly, I just wanted to have it whether it was justified or not.  My beyond lovely bandamate Ana came to see what was wrong.  When I told her that I was upset with diabetes she resorted to the commonly used but ever awful brushing your teeth analogy.  I'm sure everyone with diabetes has heard it at least 10 times.  My family has used it, my friends back home have used it, now my friends here have jumped on the bandwagon.

What is the brushing teeth analogy exactly?  It's the "Well, you just have to do it" response to your diabetes burnout moment.  "It's like brushing your teeth.  You just have to do it and yea it sucks but you have to because it keeps you healthy."  And here is how I feel about the brushing your teeth analogy.  It is the most unhelpful, unjustified, frustrating response someone could give.  It is as bad as "well at least diabetes provides jobs" except without the shock factor.  I don't mean to be negative to the people who use it because clearly they are one of many and I know they are just trying to help.  But I want you to know that the only thing that is even vaguely similar between diabetes and brushing your teeth is that if you stop brushing your teeth for a while you get a cavity, and if you stop taking care of diabetes for a while you go blind or get kidney failure.  So either way there is a consequence for not doing it.

But without even thinking too hard I can think of numerous ways for which diabetes is quite different than brushing your teeth...
1)  You brush your teeth two times a day to keep your teeth healthy.  We check our blood sugar 6-8 times a day and think about diabetes probably half of the time we're awake.  Unless you're a little strange I don't think you think about brushing your teeth all day.
2)  You forget to brush your teeth before bed and your teeth feel a little nasty but can quickly be repaired by brushing them.  We forget to check before bed and it could result in a seizure or large ketones.
3)  You don't bring a toothbrush or toothpaste to your friend's house for a sleepover, or on vacation and you use your finger or borrow from somebody else.  We forget to bring our meter or insulin and back home we go.  Insulin isn't exactly a common household item.
4)  You pay probably less than $2 to keep your teeth healthy for an entire month.  I pay an average of $200 a month on diabetes supplies.
5)  Brushing your teeth does not determine when you can exercise, when/what you should eat (aka prevent you from eating when you are starving or force you to eat an hour after a huge meal), or require you to poke yourself all the time.
6)  Brushing your teeth makes your teeth look clean and white.  Checking our blood sugar gives us large calluses all over our fingers.
7)  You brush your teeth and nobody seems to notice.  We check our blood sugar or give a shot and it's a field day of curious people staring until we stare them back.
8)  If you don't brush your teeth you can still be in the army, fly a plane and scuba dive for long periods of time.  You may not be the most fun/attractive person to be around but you can still do it.
9)  If someone sees you brushing your teeth they usually don't tell you that their grandmother died of not brushing her teeth.
10)  Whether you brush your teeth before dinner or after dinner makes little difference.  Pre-bolusing vs post-bolusing can have huge effects on complications later in life.
11)  If you brush your teeth the same way every day you will get the same results.  If we keep the same routine, the blood sugars don't seem to go along with it.  I guess they just don't like routines.
11)  Oh and in case you haven't noticed....We have to brush our teeth too.  

Although the list could go on forever I think that the point was made.  I don't really like that analogy and paired with my other two favorites (think of all the people who don't have the supplies you do, and well at least it's not cancer) they aren't the most supportive responses.  Moral of the story, sometimes we just need to have a negative nancy moment and you telling us why we shouldn't have them isn't exactly helpful.  What would be helpful would be to acknowledge just how much effort is put into keeping ourselves in range and sometimes it is never enough.  But with your support and acknowledgement of all we do, life is a lot easier.      

Oh and on a totally different note I'm leaving for expedition tomorrow morning and so I won't be able to update my blog until the 15th.  But there will be a lot to tell because let's just say we have four armed guards with us at all times and "it's not uncommon to have elephants and lions around camp at night so don't ever go to the bathroom without a guard."  Wish me luck!