We've all experienced a1c anxiety. We all know in our heads that it's just a number...not something that we should be beating ourselves up over. We all know it...and yet many of us still get nervous...still get upset...still feel like a failure when we don't wind up seeing a good number.
I don't know why, maybe just because it's human nature to want to see a good number...to have a good result...to feel like all of our hard work has paid off and we have a good result to prove it...like getting a gold star or an A+ on our work as a kid in school.
Emma and I will be going to her clinic appointment this afternoon...t minus 2 hours and counting actually. I think the worst part for me is that moment before the doctor actually tells you what the result is. I think I have been so conditioned to always receive bad news while sitting in that drab room in the hospital clinic, that I just expect it. I mean really...that is the room that Emma was diagnosed in. That is the room where my life changed forever. That is the room where our innocence and naive way of thinking was washed away and flushed down the randomly hidden toilet that doubles as a cabinet in there. That is the room where my life as a Mom ended and my new career as a D-Mom and pseudo pancreas began.
It's the room where my 4 year old baby climbed up onto my lap and stared into my tear filled eyes as I explained to her that we would be ok...all the while feeling the overwhelming weight on my heart convincing myself that we wouldn't be ok. I felt suffocated in that room. I felt as if the light inside me had been rudely and abruptly extinguished and I would never be able to find a way to light it again. I felt like that room would swallow me whole if I let it.
It's the room where I learned how to give an injection for the first time. It's the room where the nurse forced the insulin pen needle into my shaking hands and MADE me stab a stuffed animal with it to practice.....MADE me stab myself in the stomach with it to learn....MADE me stab my daughter after she had eaten her first meal after diagnosis.
It's the room where I laughed through my anguish as I saw the receptionist lay bubble wrap out covering the entire floor...just so my daughter could have something fun to do while she was oblivious to the fact the her entire world was changing around her. I laughed hysterically...probably with a hint of lunacy as well....as I saw her jump up and down...up and down...over and over again...across the entire room...POW POW POW POW POW POW...as each bubble on the sheet exploded. Her laughter filled the room as the people walking by out in the hall probably thought that world war 3 had begun and machine gun fire was happening in that little room.
That room holds so many memories for me....sad, depressing, full of despair....that room sometimes feels like an entity all it's own to me. Sometimes I want to go in there with buckets of paint...all of the colours of the rainbow...and just fling them at the wall....wash away the drab blue of pain....and cover it up with new rainbows....new life...new hope. I want to change the way I see that room.
So, as I sit there this afternoon....holding my breath as those few seconds pass before the doctor tells me that a1c number......I will think of that change...and hopefully it will make it a little more bearable. I will hear the echoes of Emma's laughter and the machine gun pop of the bubble wrap...and I will focus on our life as a whole....and not just this one number...this one measurement of this one moment in time. I will try....and that's all I can expect from myself...just try.
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