D-Blog Week Day 1 - I Can...

I have had the honour of speaking in front of various groups about how I live my life with type 1 diabetes.

I usually start off by telling them my diagnosis story so that they know a bit more about who I am and where I am coming from.

Then I tell them the story of the day I decided to become a runner. I talk about the journey from that day to the day that I ran the Run for the Grapes half marathon.

And I tell them the very important lesson that I learned while on that journey.

Life is scary.

Diabetes is scarier.

And I live with diabetes every single day.

I talk about how diabetes is scary in the immediate sense when we have one of those awful lows that comes out of nowhere and scares us for days afterwards. And I talk about how diabetes is scary in the long term sense as we hear and read about those complications we might develop despite our best efforts to try to manage without a functioning pancreas.

I talk about how scary diabetes is and I talk about how brave we are because we deal with that fear every day.

And then I talk about how, since I started to look at life from that perspective, I started saying yes to things that scare me. Yes to cycling. Yes to swimming. Yes to trying a duathlon. Yes to trying a triathlon. Yes to doing motivational speeches in front of a room full of strangers. Yes to golf. Yes to golf tournaments. Yes to curling. Yes to curling bonspiels.

Life is scary.

Diabetes is scarier.

And I live with diabetes every single day.

Diabetes has helped make me so brave that I have said yes to things I would never have said yes to before. My life is richer and fuller now that it would ever have been if I had not been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 12 1/2 years ago.

So yes, you're damn right I can...