Good morning friends and welcome to Day 5 of Diabetes Blog Week 2011! Today’s topic is Awesome Things. Here’s the prompt from Karen:

Awesome things – Friday 5/13: In February the #dsma blog carnival challenged us to write about the most awesome thing we’d done DESPITE diabetes. Today let’s put a twist on that topic and focus on the good things diabetes has brought us. What awesome thing have you (or your child) done BECAUSE of diabetes? After all, like my blog header says, life with diabetes isn’t all bad!

This one was a little hard for me. Besides the obvious (meeting all the awesome diabetics across the internet AND being on TV as a kid because my mom was so heavily involved* with the local JDRF chapter) I think my most awesome thing is pretty abstract. Basically, I think diabetes has taught me to appreciate what I have and to not dwell on what I don’t. In other words, there are a lot of things I could complain about, but I choose not to. Why? Complaining doesn’t help. Sure, I complain about my bloodsugar being too high, but, at the end of the day, it’s what I do that makes a difference. And I translate that thought to other aspects of my life. Here’s an example.

This morning, I woke up and the electricity was out. (Note to Norfolk: Was that some sort of sick Friday the 13th joke?) If you know me in real life, you know that I get up pretty early. How early? Well, earlier than the sun on most days (including today). You can imagine the frustration when I started thinking about everything I needed to do before I left so that I could get to work on time. And then I realized that I wouldn’t even be able to make coffee! YIKES! So, instead of fretting and complaining to my tweeps about it (yes, the thought crossed my mind) I thought about how awesome it is that I wake up and CAN see on most days. As most of you know, diabetes retinopathy affects many diabetics and, well, let’s just say that, in my 22 years (and counting!) of being a type 1 diabetic, I haven’t always been in the best control. ;) Then my entire morning routine became more of an adventure! I was thinking, “hmm, what can I do without any lights?” I must say the dark shower was pretty relaxing! Putting contacts in my eyeballs in the dark? Not something I’d choose to do.

The funny thing was that, I was stressing the whole time that I’d be late to work. Especially since I needed to stop for coffee on the way in! As it turns out, I got to work early today. And I don’t mean like the standard 5-10 minutes early. I was a whole 30 minutes** early! Makes me wonder what else I could remove from my morning routine…

Want more awesome? Check out what other Diabetes Blog Week participants are saying about their awesome here!

xoxo,

Lauren

*When I said “so heavily involved,” what I really meant was “practically started.” Yeah, that was before the internets and the D-OC, and she did her part to create community among diabetics in South Central Texas. She’s awesome. :)

**Yay! Time to blog! ;)