Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

 
 
#showmeyourpump
 
 
The Great Spousal Unit was away on Saturday, so I basically did what I usually do when she’s away on a Saturday: I got up early, had a couple of strong cups of coffee with breakfast, visited my favorite farm truck, came home, cleaned the house within an inch of its life, started the laundry, had lunch, Oh… she came home for about an hour and a half… and yes, absence DOES make the heart grow fonder… where was I… yes… I finished up, watered the plants and the gardens, picked up the dry cleaning, stopped in to say hello to my friends at my favorite local place (you know what I mean if you know what the number #147 means), and then I went home to make dinner.

The point is, the unsaid point of all this up to then, for me anyway, was this: I had seen so much bad news on the television this past week that I was happy to disconnect, turn it all off, and just concentrate on me and my happiness for a while. Simply put: The bad news from Ukraine, Gaza, and the anti-immigration factions in America (I think they’ve forgotten that they have descended from immigrants themselves) had me feeling so sad that I didn’t want to hear anything from anyone for a while.

Then I prepared dinner (and it was good– a recipe is in the near future here) and sat down to eat it. I pulled out my iPad, dialed up the Pandora (B.B. King channel), and proceeded to chow down. Some of my stress had gone away, but by no means had all of it dissipated.

Since the iPad was nearby, I started to check out my Twitter feed.

That’s when it happened.

I started to read post after post with the hashtag #showmeyourpump. Of course, this all started with Miss Idaho, who bravely (and why the hell NOT?) wears her insulin pump for the world to see, started to get some non-D world props on NPR and other outlets. I saw photos of people heading out for a run, people on the beach, having dinner, and living perfectly normal lives that just happen to include an external pancreas.
 
 
My reaction started with “Oh, that’s cool”, to “I love that… wouldn’t it be cool if that started trending?”, to something like this:

Once again, without even knowing it, the Diabetes Community pulled me up from a very sad, very unhappy place to a place where I was happy and optimistic, even proud that I wear my pancreas outside of my gut. And even though this has been trending for a few days now, even though I’m late to the party again, I can only say:
 
 
Thank you.

I will support you through thick and thin, forever.
 
 
Thank you.
 
 

On my way to work this morning