[judi t]

Imagine the frustration, Evermont, if you 'fight the good fight' and do everything humanly possible to be a 'good diabetic' (and I hate the word 'diabetic' too) and you still wake up in the morning with a soaring - 18.9 - BG, as I did this morning. So you're just lucky if your condition is relatively predictable.

I agree with the guy who said 'smile and wave'. It drives me nuts, as I've already written elsewhere, having to explain my diabetes to 'lay' people. I think it's none of their business, but everyone feels it's okay to talk about it, whereas if you had cancer they may be less inclined to stick their big noses in.

When people make stupid enquiries at the coffee machine at work, or across the table at a dinner, for example, "How are your levels?" I've been known to shoot back a line like, "Has that vaginal infection cleared up yet?" I get away with it because I'm known for being somewhat caustic -albeit in a humorous way. It soon shuts them up. (I don't say that to the blokes, by the way, but weirdly, they rarely ask such intrusive questions.) Another way to shut them up is to go all quiet and just mumble that you don't like talking about it. That one always works - but they usually go off and gossip about it! It gets back.

Unlike some of my fellow Ds on this forum and on a few blogs I've read, I don't feel it's my job to raise awareness about diabetes. I just want to live my life and not have the pejorative label of 'the diabetic'; good or bad.