Show And Tell

Hello everyone, remember me?

I’m not going to entertain the absurd notion that you were all laying awake at night wondering where I’d gone. But I do feel guilty that after recently receiving a lot of overwhelmingly lovely comments about my blog and my first foray as Diabetes UK’s video blogger (more to come soon, promise) that I pretty much dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a few weeks. But I’m back, and it’s all change, and hopefully, for the first time in many many many MANY months, I know what I’m doing and where I’m going from one month to the next. Doesn’t sound like me at all, does it?

So where have I been? I’m not sure the details are even worth relaying, because actually I’ve been nowhere special. I’ve just been sorting my shit out. My work contract ended – and possibly the most devastating consequence of that was having my beloved Macbook (which happens to be the most vital cog in my blogging wheel) prized from my clutches, one digit at a time. That was a sad, sad day in my geekosphere. I know there’s a lot of shit going on in the world, but take a ‘writer’ (I use the term loosely) away from her tools and quite clearly you get one AWOL YFT1 blogger. So as the end of said contract loomed, there arrived my cue for a mad, scrambling, desperate search for the next. After a few weeks of receiving a wall of emails containing the obligatory ‘we regret to inform you that you have been unsuccessful on this occasion’ line, Jen ‘I love a worry’ Grieves seriously debated jacking it all in and heading back to Leeds. Which I do eventually plan to do one day, but certainly not because I’ve been rejected from every job I never really wanted.

This is the not the story I’m meant to be telling so to fast-forward through a few weeks of reassuring phone calls from Papa Grieves punctuated by looking at places in Leeds and flights to Australia (told you I love a worry), panic is now over. And then some. For I have somehow (I really don’t know how) managed to secure myself the holy grail of media contracts – a Permanent One.

Not permanent, but Permanent. Halle-flipping-lujah. And not just any Permanent contract, oh no. The contract to end all contracts, my dream contract, at my dream radio station. I keep forgetting, then remembering, then having to stop myself from laughing hysterically in the middle of lunch, or in the changing room in H&M (the size 10 WAS too ambitious after all), because I just can’t BLOODY BELIEVE IT. It literally validates everything I’ve ever done, career-wise, and I’ve done some very strange stuff for a 24-year-old. Working for free, moving to a city where I didn’t know a soul (twice), moving 200 miles across the country for nothing more than a trail shift. I don’t start until next week so hopefully announcing this to the world hasn’t jinxed it before the ink on my contract has even dried, but if you’re out and about in London and you spot a tall blonde screaming weird radio-related exclamations as she skips down the street (I realise I may not be the only one doing this at any given time), by all means come and say hi.

So, while all this has been going on (and it really did ‘go on’), I’ve unfortunately still had to make time to be a diabetic. Woe. Why can you not just switch it off when it crosses that line from being something you just have to suck up and get on with, to being the most ridiculous, stupid, damn frustrating inconvenience on your day-to-day existence? Like, it’s not cancer, and we’re not physically impaired, so everyday I’m extremely thankful that’s it’s NOT something more immediately life-threatening. But all the same, it’s a pain in the goddamn arse. So I’ve been thinking about the all-kinds-of-amazing that would happen if we could suddenly proclaim, “I don’t really fancy Type 1 today. Maybe I’ll give it another pop tomorrow,” like it was homework, or that trip to the dentist you’ve been delaying. Yes please.  I’ve had a little think about some ‘no thanks, diabetes’ scenarios; please feel free to comment and add yours, my fellow Type 1 pancreatically challenged friends. Think of it like a school Show and Tell, only with maybe less teddies and more needles. Or a very warped form of e-group therapy. Hmm. Moving swiftly on… I hereby dub it Share Day on YFT1, so let’s all get involved and have a good ol’ British moan. I think we diabetics deserve it. Please comment with your own pitfalls, and I’ll add them into the post with your name and any other info about yourself you care to include. Pumpers and Type 2’s welcome, we don’t discriminate. Mi blog es su blog. I suddenly feel like Cilla Black on Blind Date…

The X Factor's got nothing on this...

1. When I finally drag my lazy backside to the gym and clock a good 5k, only to get off the treadmill and realise my lunchtime insulin is finally doing its job and I’m now 3.4. Resulting in me reaching for the emergency chocolate bar in my bag and eating every single calorie I’ve just burned. And then some. Which may go some way to explaining the size 10 H&M failure. (That, or the fact that I’m just plain greedy).
2. The days when being hyper bothers me more than normal and I end up sulking and feeling rotten aaaallll day, because no matter how much insulin I pump into my poor body, my glucose meter just won’t stop screaming a double figure at me. Like it knows I’m feeling shit about it and it’s laughing in my face anyway. On top of that, due to the aforementioned sulking, everybody (read: men) decide to explain away my less-than-chirpy disposition on a bad case of PMT. Per-lease. I often wish that was the case, because then at least 50% of the population would empathise.
3. The many times when I’m in such a rush that I stick my insulin in the nearest and most readily available wedge of skin – generally the arm. But said rush means I don’t do it *quite* right, and I end up yelping in pain at the horror of pulling the needle out at a different angle to which it went in (apologies to those eating lunch). This results in a rather fetching black and blue style spotted pattern effect, commonly known as a bruise – the size of Wales. Coincidentally this ALWAYS happens the day before I’m due to don my finery for a night out in my super fabulous brand new dress, which of COURSE has short sleeves, and I end up displaying my blue polka dot arms in all their battered glory. Much to the absolute visible horror of both potential suitors and some rather over-tanned, over-plucked, over (under) dressed and over-perfected females that I could never ever compete with. Sigh.
4. Those particularly blonde diabetes-related moments when, feeling uber smug because I’m being a Type 1 Queen and testing at all hours of the day, I head to my box of medical supplies (which IS the size of a pharmacy) to grab another tub of test strips, only to discover there’s not one box left as I thought, but I’ve actually completely run out. Cue dizzying panic as I call the surgery to get a new prescription, figuring out the logistics of waiting the obligatory two days for it to be ready, after which Papa G has to then pick up and post to me because I’m yet to move it from Basingstoke to London. Just as I’m reaching the peak of Flusterville wondering how on EARTH I’m going to cope for four days without testing, the receptionist politely, and with an air of frustration at the idiot she’s got on the phone, informs me that she can fax it straight to the pharmacy as soon as it’s signed. Phew. Two hours later: cue a hypo from the panic alone. Good. And do I learn my lesson and keep a diligent check on my medical supplies to avoid a repeat of the drama a few weeks later? Of course not.
5. The days when I’m really really REALLY tired (yes, yes, this is most of the time, through entirely my own doing) and make the effort to finally get an early night, only to be rudely awoken by the joys of a midnight hypo. After a few hazy minutes of scrabbling around in the dark for remnants of flat Lucozade, disturbing both housemates in the process, I’m then forced to resign myself to the fact that I’m most likely going to be awake for at least an hour, thinking of nothing but the alarm due to go off at 6.45. When I do eventually drop off and get jolted out of the last snatches of undisturbed sleep by the somewhat offensive ‘Marimba’ alarm tone (Apple fans you know the one), my morning blood test politely informs me that I’ve over-corrected my hypo and I’m starting the day on 15.2. Cue the grumps of point 2. Fun, no?
6. Here’s your cue folks… or should I say: “And here’s our Graham…”