Diabetes. That all-consuming pain in the @$$… But I like to remind myself that there are worse things. No, really, there are. Make a list. Here’s mine:
1. Aging. The front of my hair is getting thin. And my face looks so drawn in photos these days. I miss that fresh-faced girl.
2. The Carpal Tunnel Syndrome — crippling for anyone who sits at a keyboard as much as I do.
3. Gluten-intolerance. No wheat = high-maintenance lifestyle. Ugh.
4. Yeast where it doesn’t belong. Enough said.
5. Future Anxiety — which I try to keep in check — but what will become of us someday? Will we have kidney failure and become incontinent? (Sorry, but the mind is unruly at times)
6. Parenting Anxiety — what will become of our little ones? Will they contract some (possibly worse) chronic disorder? Or worse yet, run into some loon who turns out to be a predator?
7. “Too Profitable to Cure.” If this is The Anadulterated Truth, may all the responsible parties be struck by lightening.
There now. Feel better? Me neither. But it helps to share.
Editor’s note: I was tempted to add “housework” to this list, but decided that might be just a little too whiney.
“Sharing” is a good medicine. Maybe it can´t bring back all that we lost, but it´s good to see that we are not alone.
Nice post
I’m afraid my list would be a lot longer. For some reason this post http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/09/finding_beauty_.html that I just recently read, struck me as an antidote to getting too sad/downtrodden about my situation.
Go outside in this wonderful fall weather, lie on the ground and spend some time watching the clouds and relaxing. Better yet, do it with someone you love and spend the time trying to figure out the cloudshapes each of you are seeing. Take AT LEAST 5 minutes and see how you feel after all of it.
Then thank God we’re not back in 1920 when insulin hadn’t been refined yet and the ‘cure’ for diabetes was an incredibly restricted diet!
Schizophrenia is worse than diabetes. And funnily enough, there’s a connection: schizophrenics are at significant risk of developing type 2 diabetes (2 to 4 times higher than the general population). This appears to be partly a genetic thing. But diabetes is also a side effect of some of the most common medications, such as clozapine.
My wife works with schizophrenic outpatients, and a lot of them are diabetic. I thought it was just a weird coincidence, but a quick google reveals that it’s no coincidence at all. (e.g., http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/184/47/s67)
A lot of them also happen to be crack-addicted, but that’s another story.
You rock ….your list rocks. I would have added housework… whininess be damned.
I think the last item is ironic! The person selling the book, with one of the chapters titled, “Pharmacists—Peddlers of Street-Legal Death,” for $18, seems to be profiting by just the opposite spectrum. (By the way, I’ve never known a pharmacist to consider themselves a peddler of death, except of course, Robert Courtney.).
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I love the idea – another list! I’d include chauffeuring the kids and sitting in endless traffic and car lines. And one more, the endless fatigue from many auto immune chronic illness that can be worse to live with than most people can imagine (oops, but the list is not about illness, is it?) Feels good just to write it.