Next month, it will be 16 years I’ve lived with diabetes (in case anyone is looking for gift ideas, wax or peridot are the suggestions). And as someone who at the best of times has a memory like a sieve, I have some trouble remembering much before my diagnosis. It was a long time ago, my life looked very different to now and I was a very different person. But there are some things that I miss…

  • I miss my stomach not looking like a pin cushion
  • I miss walking around the house with little on not having to worry about getting infusion sets caught on door handles
  • I miss not knowing about carbohydrates
  • I miss not having to stick fingers with a lancet dozens of times each week
  • I miss drinking a glass of juice without considering the graph on my CGM
  • (I miss not knowing what a CGM is)
  • I miss not worrying about long term health complications
  • I miss not feeling guilty about numbers, food, my actions
  • I miss being able to leave the house with a tiny clutch bag
  • I miss suitcases without diabetes supplies
  • I miss knowing nothing about diabetes
  • I miss not thinking about how what I was eating/doing/drinking/thinking impacts on numbers
  • I miss stress just being stress and not meaning a spike in my BGLs
  • I miss feeling healthy – or at least being seen as someone who lives with a health condition
  • I miss not being different to my sister
  • I miss not worrying that my sister will also get diabetes. And while my daughter wasn’t born when I was diagnosed, I miss the possibility of not having to worry that my daughter has inherited my faulty genes.
  • I miss never being hypo

There are many blessings that have come from being diagnosed with diabetes – pancreatically-challenged friends, a great job, travelling the globe talking about diabetes. All of those things – I’d miss them terribly. But diabetes? No. That is the one thing that I wish I could miss.

What do you miss about your life before diabetes came along? Are you too young to remember?