Tag: my personal story

Home on the range

I was diagnosed three days before I had to leave for India to teach a yoga teacher training. My endo told me to get a glucometer and test my levels and to try and keep them around 4 mmol.  I remember testing and seeing a 4.6 and thinking I was too high.  I was diagnosed before CGM technology became readily available and when many … Read More Home on the range

+

Diabetes is really really really hard

Yesterday I wrote this poem about diabetes. I find writing to be many things, its a way for me to express how I see the world without having to verbally express. My thoughts can get jumbled and I like to use words on the page to iron them out. Poetry is even easier to write than prose. the words don’t have to make sense. … Read More Diabetes is really really really hard

+

Zooming in and Zooming out

The last few months have been trying. Lots of juggling, no new experiments, just keeping my head above water. That’s because I have a life and it takes priority. That doesn’t mean I ignore diabetes, far from it. It means I work extra hard to keep an even keel. I double down and get laser focused. This means sticking to routines, keeping up with … Read More Zooming in and Zooming out

+

Flavours of Ignorance

There is only one seamless reality. That awareness flowing in and through every animate and inanimate object. Self is not available through any of the senses, yet it is throughout all of the senses. Call it the knowing principle – awareness- consciousness, we human beings personalize it as “my” awareness. Yet logic dictates that what is common to all cannot be personal. What else … Read More Flavours of Ignorance

+

The power of effort

Every morning I tell myself, it’s a new beginning when it comes to my life with diabetes. No matter the circumstances at bedtime, waking up is always a fresh start. But I didn’t always see things like that. There was a time not so long ago that I dragged the past onto the present and my mornings were spent in the gloom of dreadful … Read More The power of effort

+

The balm that frees the world

Everywhere out there I feel trauma. Standing in the chasm is terrifying and it hurts. How can we let these insane things happen? How can we be in the midst of what looks like another world war? What can I as just one of 8 billion people do? Practically I’ve been donating to various charities like this one spare a rose, and offering my … Read More The balm that frees the world

+

Dear Diabetes

Dear Diabetes, You came so unexpectedly. You freaked me out, exhausted me and made me confused. You forced me to look for answers, but for a long time I looked in all the wrong places. Endless doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths, people without a clue as to what was going on. You hid like a rat, slowly gnawing away at me until it was almost too late.

+

180 Decisions a day

It was in a coffee shop after consuming a giant banana muffin that I made the first big decision of my adult life. Picking up the coin operated payphone wasn’t easy, but I had to do it. It was time to call it quits on college. “Are you sure?” My father asked. I had no doubt; it felt good to be an adult and … Read More 180 Decisions a day

+

Indoctrination

I want to take a minute to talk about indoctrination. Specifically, indoctrination in the diabetes world. When I was first diagnosed and for the first 6 years I didn’t really understand what it meant to have diabetes. I was told by my HCP to change my diet, to exercise and that eventually I might need medication. Being involved in yoga and healthy living since … Read More Indoctrination

+

Doing it ‘scared’

Today marks another World Diabetes Day. A day to share that people living with any kind of diabetes can do whatever they set their minds to. We are not defined by our condition. Spreading awareness of all the facets of living with diabetes, including access to medication, daily management and mental health help people not living with this condition understand more of what we … Read More Doing it ‘scared’

+

Thinking outside the box

My yoga teacher used to say “the mind is a box”, a self-perpetuating entity that endlessly recycles itself loop upon loop. In yoga these loops are called vasanas. Habits etched so deeply in that we don’t even know they are there. Think a habitual response to a stressful event. That’s a vasana I have definitely developed some indelible grooves after having weathered diabetes the … Read More Thinking outside the box

+

Put yourself in my shoes

When I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes all I knew about the condition was that I would be insulin dependent for the rest of my life. I didn’t think much about the details about the invention of insulin until I became more involved with diabetes advocacy. I was surprised to discover that before the discovery of insulin in 1921, a diagnosis of type … Read More Put yourself in my shoes