The past ten years have seen an incredible amount of advancement in my Diabetes and self-care. It wasn’t until 2015 that I discovered carb-counting… It seems pretty ridiculous when I say it, now. I’m not sure how I survived without proper food calculations and knowing how much insulin to take in relation to the food I ate. There’s also been significant education on what constitutes something that will affect my blood sugars or not. Realistically, everything affects blood sugars but I mostly mean in relation to food.
The introduction of the insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring has been life-changing for me and has seen me through some of the most controlled blood sugar levels and the best A1C results in my life. Although we did the best we could with what we knew throughout my youth, a lot of what I’m doing now would have been available or could have been taught to me. In light of the many years of complications, comas and issues that resulted from my Diabetes, it’s been raising an important question in my mind in recent years: I wonder if it could have different?
I have to admit that it’ll come off sounding a bit like bragging… And that’s mostly because it is. But I pretty much brought myself back from the brink during my childhood. Insulin resistance and complications made it so that I was given a pretty short life expectancy that wouldn’t have seen me past my teens. When I joined karate, I pretty much put myself through hell in order to grow, heal and get better. Insulin resistance eliminated, I was able to push forward and start accomplishing some actual goals in life instead of assuming that I’d likely die before I reached adulthood.
The bragging part comes from the fact that I managed to keep training, developing and pushing myself despite these obstacles until I reached black belt and became an instructor. I also had dreams of becoming a police officer so that I could help others. I had to get myself through basic training and develop myself further in order to accomplish that goal and actual earn my badge. And once I had that badge, it took me very little time to grow and become the one who taught others to earn their badge.
At the height of my martial arts peak, I considered myself to be good. Extremely good. I won’t be vain enough to say I was the best because Sensei could still beat the living shit out of me and even if he hadn’t been in the picture, there’ll always bee someone more skilled. To think otherwise would be ignorant. But I was fast, strong and beyond capable. So what would have happened if all this knowledge, education and resources had been available to me when I had been going through all of that? Would my skills be even further than they are now? Would I have been faster and stronger still?
I can’t help but feel tat I’ve lost an opportunity by only learning everything I have about my own self-care in the past few years as opposed to the past few decades. It boggles the mind to think that all of those avoided complications and better health would have not only forwarded my life in martial arts and fitness respects, but perhaps I would have increased my longevity by a significant amount, as well. Who knows? I certainly don’t because that ship has sailed. Perhaps it’s time to revisit that hell I put myself through, all those years ago, and start working towards getting back some of what I’ve lost in recent years. Some food for self-thought… ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 