Diabetic Dreamin’

Are you a diabetic in you dreams? Not your idyllic musings, of course, but your dreams while sleeping.

I often have dreams about diabetes and being a diabetic– the common pattern goes like this:

In some context, usually a weird one like I’m at my parents’ house organizing a party for a collection of acquaintances from elementary school plus plus David Bowie wearing a bear costume, I am presented with one of the forbidden foods of diabetes. Chocolate cake. With ice cream. And a bagel.

I eat; I spend the rest of the dream being high, or fretting about being high, or both.

Not a fun dream-pattern, but not very surprising either; clearly, I am often anxious about my blood sugar and how I must manage my diet to keep it in control. Doesn’t take Freud to psychoanalyze that one.

But are you a diabetic in other dreams? Dreams not specifically about diabetes?

I was thinking about it the other morning while recollecting the night’s dream, and I realized I don’t think I’m a diabetic in my dreams unless the dream is specifically about diabetes. Not that I’m explicitly not a diabetic, but there’s no checking of blood sugar, or bolusing, or constant monitoring of my continuous glucose monitor output, or careful carbohydrate allocation, or any of the hallmarks of diabetes that accompany my waking moments.

In other words, my dreams seem to be all-diabetes or no-diabetes. Is that typical? Is it a good sign or a bad sign? I’m inclined to be flattered by my dream-consciousness; gee, you think of me as a normal person, and not just A Diabetic? Does this imply I can have a non-diabetic psyche and sense of self when my diabetes is cured? Does this mean I won’t always be constantly thinking about milligrams per deciliter of glucose?

Or is it just that my dreams have tunnel vision and focus on only one thing at a time, either diabetes anxiety or escaped kangaroos or learning to fly a helicopter or anything as long as it’s one basic concept at a time? Why is diabetes, the background of every moment I’m awake, so intermittent in my dreams?

The internet, unfortunately, is not much of a psychoanalyst; searching for anything about diabetes and dreaming gives me stories about specific dreams and nightmares people have had, articles about the link between sleep regularity and Type 2 diabetes, and content about the other kind of diabetic dreaming– for a cure.

Any dream analyst volunteers? How do your dreams compare? Or does it all just mean I want to kill my father and sleep with my mother?

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.