I wrote today’s post a year ago as part of D-Quote, an initiative created by Cynthia Zuber of Diabetes Light | My holistic journey to health. The purpose of her project was to give voice to members of the diabetes community and to increase advocacy and outreach during November Diabetes Awareness Month.

My diabetes quote is:

A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life. William Arthur Ward

Type 1 Diabetes is the result of an autoimmune attack on our beta cells.  We can talk about the many manifestations of that attack with mention of missing hormones (insulin and amylin) and malfunctioning GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1). Or we can simplify the discussion and say that our bodies lack equilibrium. Our bodies lack balance.

Those of us with Type 1 try to manipulate insulin, food, exercise, stress, etc. in an attempt to balance our blood glucose. Too much insulin, we go low. Too many carbs, we go high. What is too much today might be too little tomorrow. Unable to quantify many of the things that affect our BG, we walk on a tightrope and do our best not to fall off despite our many wobbles. At the same time we try to find a balance for how diabetes fits into our lives. We search for the happy medium between managing our diabetes so that we can live our lives and living our lives just to manage our diabetes.

We can never be perfect with diabetes and sometimes the only thing we can do is laugh at our imperfect attempts at perfection. Sometimes a sense of humor is the best way to get through the day. The best way to put diabetes into perspective. The best way to make sense of our lives.