A reasonably smooth period of diabetes control leads to a fiery exchange between Alison and her pancreas.

Dear Alison

I am not impressed. At the age of 4 I decided you were mature enough to take over responsibility for being your own pancreas, and I went into retirement having trusted you with the job.

I will admit, at an operational level your performance is acceptable. You have done the job adequately over the years. Results are within range and you don’t often endanger limbs or reputation by going hypo. However, when I gave you this role I expected you to dedicate yourself to it. Diabetes was to be your number one occupation, your raison d’etre, your first thought in the morning, your last thought at night and the majority of the thoughts in-between. This has not been the case lately. I cite several examples as evidence:

• You completely forgot the 29 year anniversary of my retirement. You should be ticking off every day you’ve managed to survive since my leaving, not brazenly getting on with your life, unaware of major milestones.
• You missed Diabetes Week. To be fair you were out of the country at the time, but even so, you should be clutching at every opportunity to share your misery with fellow pancreas impersonators.
• You went on holiday and aside from a few minor inconveniences with that plastic pancreas imposter of yours, barely thought about the important role you play as a pretend pancreas. This is a dangerous game lady, you’ll have the Pancreas Promotion Society on your back if you continue to make it look like you can do their job and live a happy life at the same time.
• And on a personal note, I don’t know how you expect to maintain the stream of tedious twaddle you spout on the blog if you’re just going to take it all in your stride.

Sort it out, I need to be top of the list.

Your Pancreas

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Dear My Pancreas

Your arrogant, self-centred attitude is only what I’d expect from someone that walked off the job without giving any notice or induction training. As you might have noticed, doing your job for you takes up a significant part of my brain power. I work hard at it, but you’ll never be number one. You’ll always be in second place, right behind having a life. Deal with it.

Alison

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Dear Working Pancreases

If you think you can do a better job than me, please do drop me an email. Applications for the role of working pancreas or diabetes manager are always welcome.

Lots of love

Alison

There must be a reason why I got diabetes. My money is on something technical involving a lucky combination of genes, viruses, a grumpy immune system and a certain lack of luck. But, there is another alternative. Perhaps I was selected because of my amazing ability to transform into a pancreas?

I have a theory. I think that in my case, circa 1983, pancreases around the world united and decided to try and increase the size of their empire. Not content with having a single presence in every being in the world, they wanted to boost their powerbase with more recruits. I have a vision of the inaugural meeting of the Pancreas Promotion Society (PPS) taking place in a darkened room complete with full fat coke and chocolate biscuits. The agenda was simple – pancreases felt overworked and undervalued. They wanted more resources to help them do their jobs, and more time off. Therefore, they were going to launch a recruitment drive.

By recruiting people to play at being their own pancreases, real pancreases could enjoy more leisure time and a better quality of life. The Kidney Protection League were vociferous in their complaints at the potential damage this would cause to their members, but sadly never got their act together to mount a decent defence. And the Eye Evaluation Executive were tragically blind to the whole thing.

The first step in attempting to outsource the pancreatic workload to the body owner was to identify the qualities they were looking for in a trainee pancreas. These included:

Mathematical genius – or at least a vague familiarity with numbers is desirable. Carb counting, insulin dose calculating and blood glucose results analysis is a critical skill.
Excellent eyesight and dexterity for deciphering nutritional labels written in size 5 font on the bottom of an open yoghurt pot without getting wet.
A certain lack of standards. The ideal trainee pancreas needs to quickly lower their standards. Blood spotted sheets should be accepted as normal. Ingesting decade old fruit pastilles coated in several layers of pocket fluff should not be considered strange or repulsive.
A positive outlook on life, without which playing at being a pancreas gets quite dull quite quickly.

When I think back to my four year old self I don’t recognise many of those skills. I was showing promise with my times tables, had mastered an impressive number of Janet & John books and could swim without drowning. I like to think the PPS must have spotted some glimmer of potential in me and that’s why I was chosen by them to become one of their number.

Or perhaps it was nothing to do with my talents at all. Perhaps, like any respectable organisation, the Pancreas Promotion Society is an equal opportunities employer. So ultimately, they’ll recruit you whether you meet the criteria or not. Sadly they don’t seem to have a particularly effective performance management system – I’ve messed up so many times in this job and they still won’t sack me. It seems I have what is a very rare thing nowadays – a job for life.

That’s how I think I ended up with diabetes, what about you?