Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

Strengths and weaknesses… hmmm, let me see… I know they’re in there somewhere. Everyone has them. Why is it I have more trouble finding my strengths than I do finding my weaknesses?

Maybe that’s because I’m not really trying to find my strengths. I’m trying to find what you think my strengths are. That way we can all agree and be happy. Plus, like a lot of people, I tend not to focus on my strengths, preferring instead to focus on my weaknesses, in the hopes of (hopefully) making them go away.

So where was I? That’s right… strengths. Diabetes strengths. Here’s one for your consideration:

I like to believe that I’m a lot stronger than you might think when you see me in person. Stronger as in tougher. Able to get up from a terrible low in the morning, and go to work all day. Able to fight with my prescription provider for my regularly scheduled meds, hang up the phone, and go off to my appointment at the endocrinologist. Able to ride 100 miles on a hot day in June, collapse, and head back to the gym two days later. Able to handle multiple daily injections for 19 years before going on pump therapy, in addition to all of the finger sticks that come in 22 years with diabetes.

I guess you could call it perseverance as a strength. That’s something that I think all of us living with diabetes possess. Because really, do we have another choice? Sometimes this thing will try to knock us down, and sometimes it will, but the real victory is in getting back up and continuing to live meaningful lives, despite pump tube occlusions or a crazy metabolism that decides to suddenly kick in six hours after a hard workout and drop our BG into the 40s (or the 2s if you’re outside the USA), or a hemoglobin A1c that doesn’t reflect how amazingly hard we’ve worked in the last three months. Living well despite all that… that’s what I mean by strength.

Weaknesses? I’ve got ‘em. They’re not very fun to identify either.

I admit that I have a weakness for salty carbohydrates… chips, popcorn, stuff like that. Needless to say, carbs aren’t the best thing for People With Diabetes. Also, I’m not big on logging data. If logging data were as easy as breathing, I’d be the best logger ever. But since it’s not, I’m not good at logging data. Of course, the good news is that by admitting what my weaknesses are, I can get to work on being better at cutting out the carbs and uploading the data.

But whatever our weaknesses or our strengths are, two things remain important. First, that we continue to keep doing our best, showing an example for other PWDs by showing that nothing can keep us down. Second, we need to continue to support each other as we try to come up from our lows and come down from our highs. Trust me… you are an inspiration for someone. That’s a strength, and it’s even more of a strength the longer you persevere. Stay strong.

This post is my May entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival. If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetessocmed.com/2013/may-dsma-blog-carnival-3/