I changed out the bulb on my rear blinker today. Despite driving for (counts on fingers) over thirteen years, I’m not the most mechanically sound individual out there. I was surprised at how seamless the process was: remove trunk lining near bulb, remove fixture, remove bulb, replace bulb, replace fixture, replace trunk lining, carry on.
I know stuff like this must be akin to breathing for proper “petrol heads” and all that, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance on the matter. I guess my Top Gear cred will be reduced after this post has been published.
But this got me thinking about all of the processes required in diabetes management. It’s not exactly replacing a busted bulb or performing an oil change, but there are a lot of little steps required in all of our actions that revolve around proper blood glucose management. While these steps are second nature to you or I, if you took the time to write down every single action taken to replace a Dexcom sensor, the task list would be quite daunting to the uninitiated.
I know that changing your oil and changing out a Dexcom sensor aren’t remotely close to each other, but that shouldn’t stop you from appreciating all that goes into managing this disease, how much of that has become automatic in your day-to-day, and how much technological progress has been made over the past (insert number most relevant to your experience with diabetes) years.
A Consequence of Hypoglycemia. 
This is precisely why I believe that people with diabetes are some of the brightest ones out there, We’ve mastered so many skills, many of have become second-nature, many of which are improvised and are more art than science, and many of which rely on a feel and familiarity that can’t be defined in a step-by-step procedure. It would be hard to bring them back to the forefront of our consciousness and detail them all.
(But if a Tumblr attempted to form such a list, I wouldn’t be surprised…)
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It’s like the first time you changed out an infusion site..how long did it take? And now we can do them in our sleep. Does that make us “insulin heads” ?
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This is a great reminder! I am so used to all the little steps that go into caring for our daughter that I don’t even think about how many there are until we go to show someone else what needs to be done (ie a grandparent). And we’ve only been doing this for a year & a half, and pumping for only 6 months. I can only imagine how automatic it is for those who have been doing this for so much longer.
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Oh man – what a list of lists that would be!
And did Scott E. throw another Tumblr idea into the creative mind of Mr. Tumblr himself? Number 8 coming? 🙂
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Hey, I can’t change my own oil or my car light bulbs (because they are so difficult I have to have the mechanic pull some stuff out to install a bulb), but I can give myself an injection/change an infusion set/test my blood in a moving vehicle. When you think of it that way, it’s pretty badass.
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