For the next 30 days, I’ll be participating in the WEGO Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. Well I will try to at least!

Some suggestions from Wego Health:
• Share links to your daily posts over on our WEGO Health Facebook page and on Twitter with #HAWMC to connect with fellow HAWMCers. If you haven’t yet – be sure to follow @wegohealth on Twitter – we’ll be sharing HAWMC posts all month long!
• Get to know fellow HAWMCers – whether they’re in your health focus or condition-area or not. We’re all health bloggers and Health Activists. Meeting and connecting with each other is a great idea.
• Tell your readers or community members about HAWMC. Let them know you’ll be doing the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge and that they can join in the fun too. The more the merrier! (Here’s a link to share the sign up page: http://bit.ly/x1gGxg )

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Today’s blog prompt is: Health Time Capsule Pretend you’re making a time capsule of you & your health focus that won’t be opened till 2112.  What’s in it?  What would people think of it when they found it?

I would obviously have to put all of my diabetes necessities into the time capsule.

• Insulin
• Test strips
• Insulin Pump & supplies. (how big is this thing?)
• Glucagon
• Glucose tabs, drinks.
• Syringes just in case the pump fails
• Ketone stix
• batteries
• snacks
• insurance card
• prescriptions
• a list of diabetes resources and social media platforms

I would have a letter written to whom it may concern, explaining how our diabetes online community has come together to advocate for diabetes and how important social media became in diabetes care. How that people with diabetes don’t have to feel alone anymore and that they can do this. I would go into detail explaining how important wearing a pump/cgm is and how long it took for us to fight for it. How technology was ever changing and how patients voices became a huge force to be reckoned with.

I would like to hope that by 2112, diabetes would be cured and the person who sees all of the supplies and reads my letter, would get a glimpse of what life was like with diabetes back in the day!

Today is my Dia-versary, and in case you didn’t know it’s also Black Friday. How fitting… haha.

My diagnosis was on November 25, 2000 at precisely 11:10am. How do I remember this? Because right before the doctor came into the office I looked at my watch to see what time it was. It’s funny the little things you remember.

It’s now 11 years later and the sting of my diagnosis is still there. People believe that you can live well with diabetes. I believe that myself, sometimes. Other times I just sit there and think about all of the worst case scenarios and the numbers that constantly circle around inside my head. It consumes me and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me. Why can’t I get my shit together? In 11 years I still can’t get over the fact that my life is different and that I have to take insulin and count carbs and worry about lows and highs every day of my life. I don’t know how to make peace with it.

At times I just pretend like I don’t have diabetes at all. I want my life to go back to the days before my diagnosis. Back then, my biggest concerns were what outfit I was going to wear or if I was going to sleep in that day.

There are days when I don’t want to think at all. I just want to go to bed and not have any thoughts. I want to be completely relaxed and not have any worries about if I am going to make it through the night or not. Or if diabetes retinopathy will take my vision away because my blood sugar is high or the other complications that may occur over my lifetime.

The things that get me through are days like this. The day I was diagnosed because let’s be honest I could have been dead. I think I was untreated for a long time before I even had the courage to go to the doctor.

I try so hard to help others and advocate for this disease but never practice what I preach. I am always focusing on what could happen to me, why are my numbers so high? why can’t I get my a1c down? Why me?

All I can do is try to be better, right? I know I have a problem of skipping boluses or forgetting to check my blood sugars because I just don’t want to deal with it. And I am trying to fix that.

It’s all I can do.

Why you feel the Diabetes Online Community is so important? especially to you personally?
I come from the era of Aol chat rooms and instant messaging so it only made sense that when I was first diagnosed with diabetes on November 25, 2000 the first place I went to to find the answers was the Internet.

Now let me just rewind for a minute and say that being diagnosed during the holidays was tough. My first encounter with depression and a crazy meltdown happened exactly one month after my diagnosis. I was at work and a box of chocolates that was given to us by a company was put on my desk. I looked at the box and immediately started to cry, in fact I went to the bathroom and cried for half an hour (yes, over a box of chocolates). It was the first time it became real to me that I was going to be living with a disease that had changed my life forever. It was the moment that I first felt different than everyone else. I couldn’t just pick up that box and eat two candies without feeling the repercussions of a disease that could kill me if I didn’t take care of myself.

The only person I knew that had type 1 diabetes was my mother’s sister who was going through kidney failure and dialysis at that time. It scared the living hell out of me to think that could happen to me. I didn’t tell anyone what I was feeling or about the concerns i was having because I was afraid that I would be a burden to my family or they would even make fun of me for making a big deal about it. I didn’t even ask the endocrinologist what I should expect to go through.  I was going through every possible emotion you could imagine. I didn’t even want to leave the house to go to work. I needed to find others like me ASAP.

When I first typed “diabetes support” into whatever search engine I was using at that time, the first link that came up was Joslin Diabetes Message Boards. I didn’t know it at the time but that was my entry way into the world of online support. It was important for me not to be alone. So, when I was so completely fed up with my pump sites gushing blood there was a thread for that, When I wanted to get advice on what glucose tabs taste the best? There was a thread for that. And over the years, the level of support available online has grown dramatically. When I want to learn about the latest technology or research that is going on? There is a thread and tweet for that.

When I just need a friend to talk to because I feel like I can’t handle anything at all, I know my pals from The Diabetes Online Community will be there to help me get through it. There’s always someone online that I can count on to be there when I need them most.

Some of the friends and relationships that I have made online are ones that I will cherish for the rest of my life. You guys have become my extended family and I love you all.

Happy D-Blog Day everyone! See ya next year!!

The 6th annual D-blog Day is coming upon on us November 9 and I finally have a topic. Well sort of a topic more  like a project! This year I decided to do things a bit differently and put a creative twist on the day.

What you should know... D-blog Day was started on November 9th 2005 during Diabetes Awareness Month, to help unite diabetes bloggers and create awareness about diabetes.

What I would like to do this is year is to have a scrapbooking project. Everyone will make a 12×12 scrapbook page and take a pic of their creation and post it on their blog. Then you to send it to me through snail mail (send me an email at gina.capone(at)gmail(dot)com and I will give you the mailing address) so I can make a huge scrapbook that will incorporate all of the pages into a book format. I will tie the pages with a ribbon or try to bind it some other way to keep it together. How that will happen really depends on how many participants we have.

Below is a sample page of something I created which is 1 part actual scrapbook and 1 part computer generation because I didn’t have enough supplies! (I will do better than this I promise!)

What your scrapbook page needs to include:

• 12×12 sheet of paper

• The name of the person with diabetes, family name, dedication name

• Diagnosis Date

• D-Blog Day 2011

• I want a cure

• Blue World Diabetes Day Circle or Diabetes Ribbon

Who can participate? ANYONE AFFECTED BY DIABETES

Please use the hashtag: #dblogday and be sure to spread the word!!

Alternative: If you won’t be doing a scrapbook page.

The blog topic for this year is: Why you feel the Diabetes Online Community is so important? especially to you personally? Give examples of other diabetes involvement may you have, on or offline, how it helped you etc… How do you think “we” as an online community can band together to reach broader audiences to help even more people living with or affected by diabetes.

Be sure to come back here and add your link to this post below

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the Second Annual Dblog Week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog. Thank you Karen !

Today’s Prompt: Wild Card

I got creative! Click on photos to make it larger

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the Second Annual Dblog Week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog. Thank you Karen !

Today’s Prompt: Saturday Snapshot

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the Second Annual Dblog Week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog. Thank you Karen !

Today’s Prompt: Awesome Things.

Diabetes has taught me a lot about myself…a lot of good and a lot of bad. One of the good things was I learning what I’m actually capable of. I’ve never really been the type to pat myself on the back and I’ve always been the worst at taking a compliment.  But becoming a diabetes advocate has made me a much better person. And I love what I have been able to do over the past 10 years for people in our  community. I do it because I love it.

I am constantly reminded by people of how I have helped them and they’ll tell me about how strong I am. It still sounds weird and not right whenever I hear someone say that but it does mean a lot. Before diabetes I think you could have counted the number of people I helped on one hand. I’m not really sure why that was and I was certainly never into the non-profit and fund raising thing.

Now, my entire life pretty much revolves around it and I love it. I love it all: talking to people, hearing their stories and learning about what makes them tick. Sometimes their stories makes me sad, happy or mad. And that’s ok because I learn from them.

Over the past 10 years I’ve learned that people can be awesome, but I’ve also learned that so can I and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging your accomplishments.

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the Second Annual Dblog Week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog. Thank you Karen !

Today’s Prompt: Ten things I hate about diabetes

1. I hate that I was diagnosed at the age of 25.
2. I hate checking my fingers 15 times a day
3. I hate that I am always wishing for a cure that may never happen.
4. I hate the smell of insulin.
5. I hate that I can’t sleep without worrying about a low blood sugar.
6. I hate that thigh pouches don’t work, see day 3 post
7. I hate that it messes with my head.
8. I hate that it makes my family feel bad for me
9. I hate that it is causing me to lose hope for having a family.
10. I hate that everyday I am constantly reminded that I have a health condition.

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the Second Annual Dblog Week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog. Thank you Karen

Today’s Prompt: Diabetes Bloopers

My funniest ever diabetes moment was with me and a friend at a restaurant.

It was summer and I had just gotten my pump that prior fall. I just found the thigh pump pouch, and wanted to wear a skirt. So I figured this was the best time to use it! I was very excited to put it on. We got to the restaurant and of course I had to use the bathroom because I have the bladder the size of a pea.

Anyhow, I started walking toward the bathroom when I felt my pump slowly falling down my leg and CLUNK. The pump fell right on the hardwood floor. Before I could even bend to pick it up a waiter had already beaten me to it. He handed it to me but, with a look of WTF in his face. The wire had pulled up my skirt as he handed it to me…. and the wire and my underwear were exposed. Of course this would only happen to me, and of course my friend was hysterically laughing at me because she saw the whole thing happen.

Moral of the story: don’t use the thigh pouch without it having some sort of apparatus attached to it to keep it up!!

Second Annual Dblog Week

I am participating in the second annual dblog week started last year by Karen of the Bittersweet blog.

Today’s Prompt: Letter Writing Day

Dear Gina, 2000;

This is Gina from 2011 and I wanted to let you know that being diagnosed with diabetes is hard, but everything is going to be okay. There are going to be times over the next couple of years where you will feel like giving up. But you are much stronger than you think and you will be able to get through it. And I know you love keeping things bottled up inside but you have an unbelievable support system behind you and you should not be afraid to talk the people that love you. They want to help you. Please talk to them. Don’t be scared. It’s easier said then done but, YOU CAN DO IT.

Don’t feel like this is something you should go through alone and that asking for help is some sort of burden to those around you. Your family loves you. They will cry with you, laugh with you and be there every step of the way for you. When you are at your most vulnerable those are the people that you are going to be able to count on the most.

You are going to be so shocked at all of the things you are capable of and how many lives you will touch. You will meet so many people from all over the world who will inspire you and love you. It is going to be an amazing journey.

PS: Remember never to lose focus of why you started, always stay true to yourself. Pace yourself and understand that there is no reason to rush into anything. And the most important thing to remember and to never ever forget is: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT!!!

See you on the flip side!

Love,

Gina, 2011