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On the bus yesterday my pump started alarming to warn me that my blood sugar was too low. The person next to me asked what my pump was. Usually I say its a pager/mobile etc but because my blood sugar was 3 I couldn’t be bothered and said ‘its an insulin pump, I’m diabetic’. Their response was ‘Oh, you’d never know, you don’t look it’.
After fruit pastilles I started to think, what exactly should I be looking like?
XL handbag – check
Fruit pastilles in every pocket – check
Sometimes flashing my pump and tubing( only when clipped on waistband, never when on bra!) – checkApart from these, what other characteristics should we be exhibiting?
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Other signs that an educated diabetic spotter would look for are:
Flashing boobs when pump goes off when clipped to bra
Loitering in supermarket aisles squinting at labels printed in size 0.5 font to try and discover the carb content of a jaffa cake
Never letting the barman leave my sight so I can be sure he presses the Diet button on the drinks dispenser
Being unable to hide my fascination if I spot another diabetic out in the wild
The giant “D” tatooed to my forehead (well, it would be easier, it would save having to tell people) -
@megs: As far as your avatar goes, I’d rather think you’re hyperthyroid than hypobetaic
Maybe it’s the electronically anonymous pump that buggers up recognition…you should carry along one of those practice pens that contains sterilized water, for some spectacular public shoot-upping (and instead of earrings, insert 2 syringes and clip them fast with their caps – then you’ll also be in permanent earshot of some backup when an infusion set goes dumb).
Oh, don’t forget @teloz‘s brass bell (along with tattoo)
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@Alison: I’m loving the idea of flashing boobs to alert me to a hypo, now thats a bit more interesting than a message on my pump screen! Wow, that would have had the whole bus looking my way.
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Both me & my wife have been known to do our weekly shopping which suddenly seems to consist of only naughty sugary diabetic foods from the sweetie isle & take only empty packets up to a very confused cashier (hypos suck).
Confusingly a rapidly falling blood sugar, but not actually hypoing seems to mean we just buy immense amounts of trash food we’d never normally buy.
As to the look of diabetics, most people still seem to confuse type 2 & type 1, so technically you had @megs had a complement as the person probably expected a diabetic to be 21 stone & eating a mars bar
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@ckoei, It would be really difficult, but in the interests of diabetic spotters everywhere, I’m quite prepared to forgo the brass bell in favour of the flashing of boobs!
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I flash my boobs. My pump is always on my bra. I have no idea what this looks like but no-one has said, Ah! I see by your boob-nestled device you are a diabetic.
My diabetic ‘look’ is probably the wildly spaced out look I exhibit (apart from my boobs) when hypo. An ‘I know I’m supposed to do something, what was it, oh yes sugar, oh, look! There’s that shopping list I lost last week, it was a notebook I supposed to buy! Hang on, what was I doing? Oh yes, well look at that! I did have a pound, i could have paid for parking! Lemon sherberts! Didn’t know I had those in here, I’d love one of those, oh yes i can have one, my blood sugar is low – er, yuk, it tastes horrible, don’t want that, better buy somthing else, now, what do I fancy, no – not those… chocolate’ll take too long… those have too much colour in, and my teeth won’t stand up to many of those sticky, hard wotsits, can’t remember their name…oooh, my legs feel a bit weird…’ sort of look.
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@lizz – I can’t comment on the boobs (well I can, but I won’t) but that has to be one of the best descriptions of the hypo thought process I have ever read! Thankyou
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@lizz and @Nig- agree what a good description of a hypo wandering mind. Why do we get so picky with what we want to eat/drink when hypo. I almost feel like I’ve wasted my chance for something nice when I have to drink Lucozade, as for glucagon injections they can’t compete with a Wagon Wheel or two. Which flavour of fruit pastille to eat first is a complete conundrum.
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I managed to scare two salesmen out of the office yesterday with my bizarre hypo behavior… I was 1.2 when I checked and whilst that definately hurt I & isn’t advisable I suspect I won’t be seeing the salesmen again! who knew diabetes had advantages!
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For @teloz‘s sake, back to the flashing boobs: from previous bits of information supplied, one got the idea that the preceding model of (Medtronic) pump could buzz & squeal…is the flashing a Veo-specific feature?
@lizz: Your “wandering mind” is my usual way of going about; when hypo, I become fanatically fixated on single things (hope this supplies some mitigating circumstances for the limericks
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You can always spot us by the gnarled looking, black speckled fingertips…
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Lizz – that’s brilliant. Must use it to try to describe to non D people what a hypos like.
The only difference between your hypos and mine seems to be that I also always fixate on finding both my door and car keys – bit awkward if I’m in bed at the time and inconveniently they are not hiding under my pillow but are safely where they should be in my handbag (yes, large and with sweets in but more likely to be Revels then fruit pastilles). -
@hils – It could be worse chick, it could be gnarled looking, black speckled, boobs!
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@lizz Join the club, I’m happily unspeckled too despite decades of finger pricking.
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