Last week, I wrote about why we should feel perfectly all right applying for and spending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (better known as SNAP) funds. One of the reasons this is on my mind is that in the summer, I don't get paid. And regardless of how much I've put away to cover my basic bills out of the salary I get from September through May, the summer months provide a challenge. Then, if my car battery dies (like it did last week), I find myself stressing not unlike I did in the bad ole days.
Then I start thinking about those who live on a fixed income because they're retired or collecting disability benefits or unemployed or unable to work for whatever reason. They have to worry every month -- not just in the summer. And at 70 years of age, I could very easily be one of them any time now. So it helps to know that SNAP exists. But I have some other things I'm doing right now to help me get the nutritious food I need and keep my glucose in check.
Some of you might be surprised to learn that a woman who teaches college full-time at the age of 70 spent a decade on food stamps earlier in her life. And I make no apology for it. I got my first job at 13, worked in high school, and started paying income tax while I was still an adolescent. Not to mention sales tax and all of the other taxes and fees I've paid through the years to support our system that so often doesn't support us.
For my first five years on food stamps, I had two small children, no child support, and no college degree. That was before Bill Clinton ushered in the policies that forced women into jobs that could not begin to keep their kids from going hungry. So I could receive assistance for five years, during which time it helped my kids and me to eat. Not well, but regularly.
The past couple of weeks have been an adventure. As I told you in my last blog post, I left for Cuba on May 24th to plan a conference there for 2017. That would have been adventure enough, needless to say. I hoped that I would have time before I got on the plane to schedule a post for last Sunday, but that didn't happen.
So I told myself that I'd jump right on the internet as soon as I was state-side again on June 1st to make up for leaving you hanging. But by the time I got back, I was so wiped out physically, psychologically, and emotionally, that didn't happen either.
I'm no doctor or nurse. In fact, I'm not a trained health professional at all. And I know that each body is different. Some of us are older than others. We represent different genders and body types. Some of us jump out of planes for fun. And some of us can't get out of bed. It's complicated. But I hope that, if I communicate anything at all in these posts, one of the principal messages that comes across is that balance is key to managing diabetes.
When I was diagnosed with our shared condition in February of 2008, all I heard was, "Here's a list of everything you ever loved about food and drink that you can't ever eat or drink again" (a list four feet long) "and here's a list of what you can eat and drink from this point forward" (a list that fit tidily on one page of a 4" x 6" notebook). New information was coming at me so fast, I couldn't possibly catch it all, let alone understand it. So I got some of it confused. And I got some of it wrong. And I missed some of it altogether. Not to mention brushing some of it aside until later -- years later, actually -- because it was complicated and my brains were already stir-fried.
Last week, I wrote about the relationship to food that most of us have because, as best I can tell, people (like me) diagnosed with diabetes struggle -- a lot -- with that relationship. I know that more than twenty thousand people in the world die every day from hunger-related causes. And I don't want to be a whiner. But it sometimes gets tiresome thinking and re-thinking and over-thinking food the way I choose to do.
I say "choose to do" because many of us (diabetic or not) certainly don't do so. Vegans who aren't diabetic also need to pay close attention when eating outside their own kitchens. People with allergies, ulcers, lactose intolerance, or problems with gluten tend to monitor their diets, as well, if they want to avoid the immediate negative repercussions of ignoring their conditions. But people with diabetes live in a magical fog where they can eat whatever they want without necessarily experiencing an instantaneous punishment. So, like a dog eyeing a platter of chicken on a picnic table, we regularly arm wrestle our decisions and sometimes make bad ones.
The Universe sent me two curves this week. And since I'm one of those folks who overthinks and over-analyzes every possible detail of her life, I've already had to talk my brain out of overdrive multiple times in a few short days. One would think I might have learned to exhale sooner by this stage of my life, but not so much.
Anyway, the first curve (on Tuesday) involved the final nudge toward becoming a vegetarian. To make a long and winding road a simple statement, suffice it to say that my overall principles are consistent with the idea of not eating animals, but my belligerent commitment to doing whatever I please based on whatever I'm used to has influenced me to ignore my principles. *sigh*
As long as I've been ducking and running from the ultimate decision to go in this direction, one might imagine that I'd just say yes and get on with it. But managing diabetes makes diet complicated, at best. And I've got the hang of the way I'm handling it now and, frankly, dread trying to figure out how to do it differently. So Wednesday unfolded with my brain a jumble of thoughts and emotions. I bounced from grieving the loss of yogurt to balancing proteins and carbs to irritation and back to grieving over and over all day till I went to bed exhausted with the issue unresolved.
This is my sixth month of writing this blog. Weighing in weekly to mull over my life as a person who has diabetes and will have it, I presume, until I die, I've written on all kinds of emotional and physical issues, on traveling nightmares and triumphs, on loved ones, on what works for me and what doesn't, and when all else fails, what inspires me to keep loving my life and moving forward anyway. So I'm going to take a risk today and write on a topic that -- as important as it is -- most of us agree is not something we would ordinarily talk about in polite society: the trip we all make (or want to make) to the bathroom.
Diabetics who want to manage their condition think a lot about what and how much we put into our mouths. We compute how long it has been since we ate with the rigor of a tech whiz. We check our blood glucose level before we eat and even when we're thinking about eating. Just yesterday, I drove away from the Baskin Robbins store without going in because I checked my BG after I parked and realized that, while I was low enough to have a scoop of ice cream at 4 pm, it would prevent me from having dinner until 7 and I didn't want to wait that long. Many of us have the food thing down to a science, whether we're happy about it or not.
On the other hand, unfortunately, few of us understand very much about what happens after we digest our food. And it's just as crucial as the eating part.
