I am part of the Diabetes Social Media Advocacy community, and each Wednesday night we have a live chat via Twitter where we answer questions and discuss topics relating to life with diabetes, followed by a live internet radio call in show on BlogTalk Radio on Thursday nights. The following blog post is the newest diabetes advocacy initiative of DSMA, the DSMA Blog Carnival. Each month a question will be featured, and participants are given the opportunity to expand on the answer with a dedicated blog post. Here is my contribution for February 2011.

“The most awesome thing I’ve done in spite of diabetes is…”

Everything that I can ever remember doing in my life has been in spite of diabetes, and it is a laundry list of awesomeness. That is what makes this post a challenge, because I don’t have the perspective that some others have of a life before and after being diagnosed with diabetes. My life is simply “with diabetes.”

I remember being a child in elementary school and seeing my friends eat candy bars and gummie bears, drink their little juices, trade snacks, and even barter for Moon Pies. On Halloween and Valentine’s Day they would bring in candy and trade, or hand out candy canes at Christmas. I would always accept the candy, and be part of the group, but I’d never eat it. I would take it home and it would get tossed in a drawer or a basket, and eventually find its way to the garbage due to old age. I didn’t feel out of place or like an oddball during those days. It was just the way it was. I didn’t know any better, and quietly accepted the way things were.

As an adult, I don’t accept things quite that easy. Where some doctors or diabetes “experts” say that you have to limit yourself because of diabetes, I ask, “Why?” I find absolutely no logical reason why I have to limit myself to anything in this world that I want to achieve strictly because I have diabetes.

As an adult with diabetes, I have become a cyclist, pedaling thousands of miles on my bike and keeping up with people both younger and older than me in quests for a finish line that is often many miles away.

I have become a librarian, teaching people how to find information that they can use to do everything from satisfy curiosity to save a life.

I have become an adventurer, exploring cities like Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, New York, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C. without limits.

I have become a contributing member of the Diabetes Online Community, a blogger, a voice, and a soldier in an army of People With Diabetes.

I have become ME, and that is the most awesome thing that I have done in spite of diabetes.

 

This post is my February entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival.  If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetessocmed.com/2011/introducing-the-dsma-blog-carnival.