Advocate

I'm not gonna lie,  this is possibly my 15th or so post about diabetes that I've started in the past couple months.

They never make it to the publish button.

I wanted to attempt to write this post, because it's been my entire life the past couple of weeks.

Being an advocate for myself......

....is hard.

I've NEVER been outspoken about my needs.

I've never gone out of my way to make sure I'm put first.

That's just not comfortable for me.

Being a Type 1 Diabetic is basically the definition of needing to advocate for yourself though.

Needing to tell people you're around.....oh hey,  I need to eat some candy real quick before I pass out or die.  

Or....

Excuse me while I go give myself much more medicine that you'll ever consider taking on a daily basis,  because I have a dead organ that doesn't allow my body to function normal.

It goes both ways,  because I also need to advocate that diabetes isn't my fault.

That I don't need to eat only vegetables,  because guess what?  Even if I did,  I'd STILL have to take insulin.

Yes,  I can eat ice cream.

Yes,  I will live how I want.

Just because someone has lung cancer doesn't mean they stop breathing.

Just because my pancreas, which is a major organ that handles how food is digested, is completely nonresponsive doesn't mean I'm going to stop eating.

Being a advocate for myself towards people who self appoint themselves as my food police is hard.

Over the past 2 months I've been in the process of trying to acquire a device called a "continuous glucose monitor".

Basically what a CGM does is its a sensor that you insert into yourself (a fatty part of your body,  like the stomach,  leg, upper arm etc.) and it reads your blood sugar levels continuously.

This is a MAJOR thing for Type 1's cause blood sugar (aka our whole lives) determines so many things for us all day everyday.

Without this device you have to go solely off of pricking your fingers and getting blood samples that way.

With it, you have a device that at any given time you can look down at a screen and see where you're at.  High,  low,  in range.  The peace of mind that comes with a CGM is phenomenal.

So of course I want this,  right?

And of course it just can't be that easy, right?

Right.

I've been the middle man between my insurance,  doctors office (who is one day away from me firing them), and the company who sells these devices for the past 2 months.

It shouldn't be this hard!  I'm the perfect candidate for this thing.

Sometimes I just want to yell,  'please,  come live a day as me and tell me I don't need this device ASAP.'

Being an advocate for myself in this respect is so difficult.

These people are all supposed to be helping me get this thing,  and yet it's not working.

I've been on the phone with all of these people for probably about 3 hours today. I went and got documents from my pharmacy,  I went and got things from my doctor's office.

Ahhhh...

Being so physically dependent on things like this is life altering.

And having to advocate for that dependency is heart breaking sometimes.

Sometimes I wish my biggest problems were that my daughter is obsessed with Elsa and HAS to watch Frozen everyday,  which drives me crazy cause I don't like her watching so much TV.

Or that my landlord is crazy and promised us new carpet so we boxed up half our house only to find out we aren't getting the carpet,  haha.

Or that I hate going to the grocery store,  so we kind of borderline starve or Jeff has to get us take out more often than not.

Why can't I have normal people problems?

I mean,  I guess I do.

But they all seem really insignificant compared to my broken body.

I guess I'll keep practicing speaking up for myself and being that advocate I need to be.  No matter how hard or weird it is.

And I'll hope I'm done jumping through hoops and all of these medical people who should be my advocates get it together and get me what I need.