Today my friend was diagnosed with gestational diabetes after failing two glucose tolerance tests miserably. She's only got about 6 weeks before her due date, and doesn't seem to understand what her diagnosis means or what effects if could have on her or her baby.
She's been given a testing kit to check her blood sugars, and immediately started moaning that she couldn't wait for it to be over, at least she only had another 6 weeks of this!
At this stage I took to looking meaningfully at her! Come on! Don't give me that crap when you know I've got a far more serious form of this disease and have had it for 22 years! She's a sweetie, but complaining because you can't eat a bag of jetplane lollies per day just doesn't fly with me. (haha, that's a good one :P)
I think she only truly started to understand what I might be going through when we were emailing each other about diabetes, sharing our blood test results to compare, and checking on wikipedia to learn about gestational diabetes.
She asked me if I was still planning on babies and all that stuff.
So I told her. I sat at my desk at work and tried real hard not to cry as I typed how I've had so many fertility tests, and so many doctors appointments, and have more in the future, and an operation coming up because the fertility clinic won't accept us until I get the uterine polyp removed. I told her how my husband and I are facing IVF and ICSI, and that it's scary and that I've been reading blogs like crazy trying to get some information on what it's like.
As I said, she's a sweetie and I believe she means well, but when she responded that once I was holding my bundle of joy all the hard work would be worth it, that I would understand, it seriously took all my will power not to sniff and tear up. Of course I know that. Duh. Why do you think I'm even thinking of being hooked up to an insulin pump and a CGM? Why do you think I tolerate so many blood-draws (or vampire visits, as I like to call them), so many finger-pricks, so much OCD with carb counting and data collection? It's because when I see my husband with his three beautiful children and I see the love in his eyes, and I know I can hug them, but they'll always only be hugging a step-mum, I know deep down that I desperately want to be a mother. I have teenagers already, I want them right from the beginning. All mine. I absolutely know I can be a good mother cos I'm a mother of sorts already. So I know.
But she didn't and the stress sent me quite low. A juice box and a fruit bar later, and my brain came back from the clouds. I was able to get back to work, and try and enjoy the fact that revealing "my secret" was actually kind of liberating. I have another person besides my husband, my parents, my sister, and my doctors who knows a bit of what I'm going through.
The understanding my friend came to in one day, just about diabetes, was astounding. The whole office got involved, everyone wanted to know our blood sugars and what they meant. I think that's really positive. Now a few more people have a little window into my life and what diabetes is all about.
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