Insulin Pump or Pager?

So I’m walking down the street from the bus stop, and I stop at an intersection to wait for the light to change. It’s a pretty large road, and in the right-hand lane a car pulls up. An SUV of some sort, driven by a young man with his windows open and a laughing woman in the passenger seat, bare feet up on the dashboard.

The man looks over at me– “Hey,” he yells, “Whuz that, a pager?” indicating the insulin pump on the waistband of my jeans.

“No,” I yelled back into his car, “it’s an insulin pump– I’m a diabetic.”

Suddenly, he is taken aback, abashed. “Oh, dude, I’m sorry– I didn’t know!”

And I laughed. Really? In what world is it perfectly acceptable to yell at someone out of your car, but, not recognizing an obscure medical device that only 15% of 1% of Americans have? Now that’s just rude.

The light changed, and I continued across the street, my day made.

“There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.” – Czech President Vaclav Havel, addressing far more serious things than I am (June 24, 1999 Open Society Prize acceptance speech)

Happy Mother’s Day, all you mothers– and many thanks to my mother for imparting to me a healthy sense of irony and an appreciation for the absurd.

Karmel Allison

Karmel was born in Southern California, diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of nine, and educated at UC Berkeley. Karmel now lives in San Diego with her husband, where she is loving the sunshine, working in computational biology at the University of California, San Diego, and learning to use the active voice when talking about her diabetes.

Karmel Allison

Karmel was born in Southern California, diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of nine, and educated at UC Berkeley. Karmel now lives in San Diego with her husband, where she is loving the sunshine, working in computational biology at the University of California, San Diego, and learning to use the active voice when talking about her diabetes.