I don’t often stop and think about what it takes to stay alive, mostly because it’s a dark path to travel. Whether I like it or not, no matter how hard I try to isolate it, diabetes is on my mind constantly. It has to if I want to simply be.

I could play the Kevin Bacon game with my life’s decisions and almost all of them, one way or another, can trace their origins or impact on diabetes.

Which makes the simple process of spending three minutes swapping out a cartridge in my insulin pump a much more complex process. Because those three minutes grant me another 3-4 days of life. Those three minutes are an investment in my future.

But I can’t plan too far ahead, because I know I’ll need another 3 minutes this weekend to re-up on my lease on life.

See how this can get dark in a hurry? And I’m just speaking in loosely cobbled together metaphors.

This disease can be real rough if you let it. Just ask the folks on My Diabetes Secret. I’d like to think the serious that’s required for diabetes is why I try to balance life out with an appropriate amount of silly. Like, say, marathoning the Fast and Furious movies – 7 in 7 days. Without that balance, all that’s left is the painful reality of what diabetes is, and what it has the potential to do.