Every few weeks, I get a letter from my endocrinologist’s office stating that my appointment has been cancelled and needs to be rescheduled. The last time I saw my endo was January 2025. It was supposed to be April, then rescheduled to July, then September, then January of next year, but whoops another letter came yesterday and now I’m on the books for June 2026.
I called over to the office today to see if they could put me on a cancellation list.
“Is he … is he okay?” I asked. “He keeps cancelling. Is he alright? Or is he tired of me already?”
The scheduling coordinator laughed, but not in an entertained kind of way. “I know. It’s been a lot. Our office works with [name of local hospital system] and he’s on their consultation schedule, only we don’t get that schedule in advance. So we keep having to cancel and reschedule office appointments to meet the hospital requirements.”
“I get it.”
Because I did get it. The system (THE SYSTEM all caps motherfucking SYSTEM) doesn’t seem to give a shit if doctors are tapped out or if clinical teams are stretched to the breaking point or if patients are going unseen. THE SYSTEM is about cruelty and money, which is thematic for where we’re at as a country.
Because I’m already a patient at the endo’s office, the scheduling coordinator was able to get me in with a nurse practitioner to run labs, talk through my upcoming shoulder surgery (yep, that is happening), and get re-ups on the prescriptions I will need forever because there’s no cure but yes, let’s make sure I have someone write that need on a piece of paper again.
I am very grateful for her help.
Because I wanted to pretend I could skate by without a clinical visit, but I need some help. I also wanted to pretend that I was on top of all my diabetes care, but if I’m being straight with myself, I’ve entered my Johnny McFlail era. (This is not a patented concept, but it could become a cartoon once I figure out how to draw McFlailing arms.) The last time I saw my endo, I was McFlailing into some wild burnout mode and struggled to come out of it.
Didn’t come out of it? Faked my way through it.
There’s always something, right? Something to manage, something new and unusual and a little scary, like a well-intentioned squid with a head cold appearing on your doorstep and all of a sudden, you’re forced to find some salinized water and the right fish snacks and sorting out how to help a squid blow its … mantle cavity?
This might be a perimenopause metaphor.
It’s definitely a parenting metaphor.
All to say that even with the resources and access, I’m still McFlailing enough so that my diabetes control could be better. And when diabetes isn’t controlled, life becomes infinitely more difficult.
Control. The wonkiest squid. Writing that word on World Diabetes Day just made me laugh out loud for real because isn’t today the day I’m supposed to say you can do this, and that we can do anything? Post that poem for the twentieth year in a row? I like to think of living life, undefined but it is also life, very much affected by diabetes. But that life with diabetes is still beautiful in its own right, right? Between, despite, beside, on top of, beneath, through, over, beyond, against, because of diabetes?
It’s World Diabetes Day. Wrapped inside of Diabetes Awareness Month. Spread like frosting that goes from crumb coat to beyond generous and back again over the last forty years of my life.
How could I forget?
And yet … I did. I forgot about all these things. I forgot. But I somehow ended up wearing a blue sweater today. And I remembered to restock the glucose tabs in my car. My son and I happened to talk about how sleep affects my blood sugars as we drove to school today. My daughter always has a blue circle pin on her book bag.
I bring the insulin pump up to my mantle cavity and inhale, a deep breath that catches the subtle scent of synthetic hormone making the next breath possible.
Happy World Diabetes Day. And Diabetes Month. And diabetes life. You can do this. It’s just really weird.
