ENGL 103: M38: It is my PASSION, my LIFE, my EVERYTHING

Here’s a question for you. Would you rather live your life freely or have one thing that you think about and focus your attention on, on a day to day basis?

I think that while there are some things in life are important to focus on more than others, it is not always the best idea to put all of your focus and effort into one thing. This “one thing” is most likely something that someone is passionate about, it could even be a dream of theirs. It could be a sport, a career, an idea, or a person, for example. It is usually the person's own choice to be rather obsessive over this 'thing.'

But hypothetically, what would happen if you were an incredible college quarterback (like Jordan Lynch, hopefully this is never the case for him) and all your life, you have blown off family, friends, and your education, and more,

just because of your love of football. These choices seem like they have paid off up until you have an injury in the middle of a huge game. Your injury is not something that is easily healed, and it turns out you’re not going to be able to play football anymore because of it.

Would it be worth giving up everything in your life for one thing, knowing that that one thing might not always be in your life? I think in most cases, no. Giving up everything for one thing is not the best idea. I do have an exception, though, and that exception is Type-One Diabetes.

When it comes to this type of Diabetes, I think that it is essential for one to pay special attention on their disease as if it’s something that they want to have. That’s the kind of passion and drive that one needs to have to treat themselves successfully and prevent future health problems.

Although it is not someone's choice to have a disease that runs their entire life, they do have it. Some might make the choice to not properly care for their Diabetes and to divert their attention to more important things in life like relationships, schoolwork, jobs, and recreational activities. But being a type-one diabetic, I have come to realize that Diabetes affects your entire life, and it is important to put it on a pedestal above all other things, even school. In the picture to the right, Diabetes is the person in red, at the top pedestal, the winner of my love and attention.

I think that controlling Diabetes should be THE most important thing in the lives of people with it.

While I have definitely struggled with keeping my priorities straight, I have come to realize that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything, so I've been trying to make my Diabetes the thing that is most important to me.

I could go right ahead and find someone worth dating, and fall in love with them and make them the straw to my berry, the milk to my cookies, and the snoop to my dog, but I'm already in a relationship with my Diabetes.

In all reality, Diabetes could be my child, husband, or career, because one's blood sugar levels could never be perfect enough. They are constantly fluctuating with every move that you make and with every cookie that you eat.

If there was a paper that was due in a few hours that I hadn't started for a college level English class, and I checked my blood sugar beforehand and found out it was extremely high, like over 500 for example (a normal blood sugar is around 100), I would immediately stop working on my paper without thought, Diabetes management comes first.

If you have frequent irregular blood sugars, the symptoms of Diabetes can be horrendous in the short and in the long term future.

From personal experience, I know that when you have a low blood sugar, you appear to be drunk to other people. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) describes the symptoms of low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia, as when someone is shaky, nervous, irritable, confused, and dizzy. They also experience impaired vision, weakness and fatigue, and lack of coordination. In extreme cases where someone isn't able to ingest a sugary product in the right amount of time, the person can become unconscious. I can say that I've experienced everything listed, besides becoming unconscious, thank goodness!

When it comes to having high blood sugars, or hyperglycemia, the person immediately becomes dry mouthed, thirsty, a little distanced from reality, and they're unable to think as clearly, I know all of this from personal experience, it's not fun.

So, obviously the best way of avoiding these high and low blood sugars is controlling your Diabetes really well, and the way to do that is to make it your one and only true focus in life, and your goal is to perfect the treatment in order to beat the disease, and live a long, healthy life without any complications.

If diabetics put other things ahead of their disease, they could have HORRIBLE consequences in the future, even if they are happy with their lives in the present time. I don't want to go into too much detail about negative complications, because they're scary and a lot to think about. But basically, you could end up with vision complications, feet complications, skin complications, high blood pressure because of Diabetes, an increased risk of mental health problems, and loss of hearing. Diabetes is also known to be linked to oral health problems, nerve damage, kidney disease, stroke, Peripheral Arterial Disease, and problems during pregnancy if the diabetic is a woman. The ADA sums up these complications here.

I can see how someone could get obsessive over trying to prevent these terrible things from happening to them by just controlling their Diabetes well. That might just be a laundry list of medical problems to you, but it is something that could become my future if I don't value Diabetes more than anything else in life.

Some might argue that if someone focused their entire life on their disease, that they would go crazy. I'm not saying that you have to sit and think about Diabetes 24-7, you can certainly enjoy and value other things in life, you just can not simply disregard the fact that you have Diabetes and pretend it doesn't exist.

Someone could say that education and/or working a job is more important or should be of equal importance as the disease because without education, you can't get a job, and without a job, you won't be able to have insurance to be able to treat your Diabetes to the fullest of your abilities. Well, education and work is important for sure! If you're successful with multitasking in life, you should be able to handle a little extra responsibility which is Diabetes, in addition to all of the other things you have to deal with. If you don't the consequences aren't the easiest to mange.. You just don't have a choice but to put Diabetes in first place on your priority list. I'm not saying to give up on school and a job whatsoever, because I am successfully attending college and managing my disease well.

Whether you're a diabetic or not, you most likely aren't, but the message that you should take away from this is that it is important to prioritize in your life. Just sit and think for a moment about something that you really need to stop slacking with, or think about something that maybe shouldn't be a part of your life that might negatively impact your future. Make a change for the better, like how I did with making more of an effort to make Diabetes THE BIGGEST part of my life, the successful treatment of it is my gateway to a happy and healthy life. There will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!