What's with the name?

When I was a kid in elementary school I pretty much hung with the same group of people for six years. My little sister, two or three close girl friends, and that was it. The girl friends would change every now and then depending on whose father was transferred to a new Air Force base, but for the most part the first six years of my school life was spent with the same group of kids.  Even the kids I wasn't exactly friends with were the same for those six years. We were all familiar with one another to some extent, even if it was just, Oh yeah, that kid has been in my yearbook now for about five years.

Didn't stop me from being teased about the whole diabetes thing.

I don't think there were any other kids in my entire school that had diabetes. I know I was the only one in my grade, because between Kindergarten and fifth grade I was the only child who ever had to be wheeled out of class to the nurse's office because she passed out on her desk during the first week of class (which happened Every. Single. Year.). And I was the only one who needed the teacher to keep a can or two of Hawaiian Punch in his or her desk for emergencies. And I was the only one who had an alarm clock go off mid-morning so that I would remember to eat my snack so I wouldn't keep passing out. And I was the only one who "got to leave class a little early" for lunch to go give herself a shot.

Jealous? I thought not.

So I was called Diabetes Girl every now and then instead of Carla, usually by some boneheaded boy who probably had a crush on me (according to my Grandmother, anyway.) I'd be sitting here with my pants on fire if I said it didn't bother me. What kid wants to be noticeably different?

Maybe Grandma was right....I was pretty cute.



I should point out here that I can really only remember being called "Diabetes Girl" by a couple of kids, but it still stuck with me. I learned early on that labels can hurt, and being pegged for a disease isn't great. It could have been worse (there was at least one kid in my class that was wheelchair bound and severely disabled, but as far as I know he was never called "Wheelchair Boy." I always just called him Dennis, you know, 'cause that was his name.) but I think psychologically it hurt more than I realized. For a long time it made me define myself by my disease. I was Diabetes Girl. That's who I was.

I define myself differently these days, and it has been a long time since anyone has called me Diabetes Girl. Diabetes Girl is part of who I am, though, but she's not all of me, and it took a while for me to figure that out and find a balance. In high school I tried to deny that part of me entirely, but that's a different blog post...and it may actually be several.