My 2-year-return-to-insulin-shots-anniversary came and went a few weeks ago.  The anticlimactic day was all the validation I needed to know that this was the right choice for me.  I no longer count down the days, weeks, or months on shots; they are my new normal until I switch things up again or diabetes is cured.

People probably wonder why I still harp on my defective insulin pump saga, and the truth of the matter is that one can talk as much or as little about trauma as one sees fit.  Medical trauma is particularly cruel; our already-limited “control” further fades away as our cells cry out for insulin.  I continue to harp on this because the wounds are still fresh, however many years after the triage.  Yet the bandages of an engaged healthcare team have eased the pain, and I finally feel better.

Two years ago I feared that I would die of ketoacidosis while sleeping on my couch.  I worried that the graduate school experience I had always dreamed of might slip between my fingertips.  Or worse, that the mental desperation would become too much- that in my attempts to be heard my voice would eventually fade away.

Multiple daily injections (MDI) are not always pretty, but they are a guarantee that insulin is getting into the body.  MDI is literally and figuratively another shot at life.  (More to follow, but not everyone has this guarantee currently; they deserve a chance, too.)

Two years later and I have successfully completed my Master’s degree.

I flew to California twice to participate in Stanford Medicine X.

I didn’t die on my couch.

And I was too busy living to remember that it was my 2-year Shotoversary.

Insulin makes it happen.