Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

I’m one of the lucky people in America these days. I’ve been lucky enough to last a couple of decades working for the same company.

Tomorrow will officially mark exactly twenty years since I started working there, and as you might expect, diabetes has intersected a lot of the past two decades. Consider the following:

– I was 35 years old when I started working there

– I had been living with Type 1 Diabetes for 7 years when I started

– I didn’t start wearing an insulin pump until I had been there 12 years

– I didn’t start wearing a CGM full time until I had been there 19 years

Those little nuggets are just for starters. I’m on my fourth insulin product since I began working at my current job. I’ve tried three different CGMs now (four if you count two different versions of Dexcom), and worn at least four insulin pumps, including those worn in clinical trials.

There have been a lot of changes in my diabetes in 20 years, and a lot of change in me. I’ve got less hair, and more weight. I wear more devices, but I haven’t managed my diabetes any better than I’m doing right now.

This milestone is a little different than my 15 year anniversary at work. I’m in a new, much bigger department, so not everyone knows me yet. But in a way, that’s good. I’m beginning to like new challenges, and I’m finding that adapting quickly is one of the surest ways to sticking around after all this time.

We’ve had our ups and downs over the years. Things haven’t always been good, for my job or my diabetes. If you’re lucky, these things usually iron themselves out over time, or you don’t wind up spending a lot of time in your job. Or living well with diabetes.

My job needed to be more empathetic to the minute-by-minute unpredictability of diabetes. I needed to let go of the idea that my job was my identity. I think we both did pretty well.

Where do we go from here? I don’t know yet. I certainly hope I won’t have another 20 years in the workforce. But like I do in this job, I want to keep learning and growing. At work or in real life, my goals aren’t to climb the ladder. Instead, I’d be satisfied if I can just be better.