Livin' la vida diabético

An Open Letter to CEO's, Physicians, and others who want to "understand diabetics":

I applaud you for attempting to understand what your patients or consumers with diabetes experience on a daily basis. Truly, I think it's great that you are thinking of us. But as you undertake this quest to empathize, consider the following:

- Until you actually have a chronic, potentially debilitating disease, you won't understand. Really. You are welcome to try to get a glimpse into the mechanics of diabetes, but don't expect to truly experience it. We know that you can't truly experience it, and we won't hold that against you.

- Don't even think about complaining about a once-daily blood sugar check, or a few days spent living the 'diabetic life'. That's just annoying. That's like complaining to a marathoner about the short sprint to the open cashier at the supermarket. Here's a less annoying quote: "After checking my blood sugar a mere ___ times, I have newfound respect for people with diabetes who do this day in and day out."

- Take 10% of your family's income and toss it out the window. While you're at it, give up your life insurance or, if you have access to a group life insurance plan, lower your insurance to the maximum amount allowed without a medical exam.

- Consider this: have you ever found yourself on a deserted stretch of highway - the creepy kind, where you don't want to get out of your car for anything - and you really, really, really had to pee? Or how about the time you sat down in a window seat and the two very large passengers between you and the aisle (and the bathroom) fell fast asleep at the start of a 3 hour flight? Imagine feeling like *that* every time your blood sugar skyrockets.

- Find a really annoying person, go out to lunch with them, and have them say, "can you eat that??" everytime you take a bite.

- Try this, in order to get a little closer to the diabetes experience. Check your blood sugar, but disregard the nice in range number that appears on the monitor. Instead, open up an envelope that has a random number written inside: 278, 45, 180. If the number is high, interrupt what you are doing to visit the bathroom twice in the next hour. If the number is low, play the party game "Dizzy Bat" and then try to open and drink a container of orange juice. Doesn't matter if you are on the phone with investors, or in the middle of a meeting. You have to take time out to deal with it.

And then, at the end of each day, you will be graded on those numbers, and on how well you stuck to the routine, and on whether or not you made 'smart' food choices. If you get an 'A', great. A 'B' means you have to donate a day's pay to a diabetes charity. A 'C' means you donate 2 days pay and lose your Blackberry priveleges for a day. You get my drift - it's hard to approximate the guilt and anxiety.

It won't be exactly like living with diabetes, but it sure would be fun to watch.

Sincerely,
Kassie Gregorio Palmer
PWD since '86