Down with Diabetes

My story from this third scenario would have had the feel of an undercover story.

3.
I was 25, and from one day in July to the next I assumed the identity of a full-time, insuline-demanding diabetic. From a casual student life I stepped into the shoes of someone with obvious reasons to eat properly and at regular intervals all day, every day, for the rest of her days, and who actually injected that insuline and handled the bloodsugar measuring devices. One who knew how to distinguish between hyper- and hypoglycemia and instructed her family and friends how to deal with her in case of either.

The shoes were mine, of course. An endless amount of new words found their way into my vocabulary, there were the hyper and hypo kinds as well as all those words that designated the contents of my food and their impact on my body.

It was all a blow to my immune defense as well as to my general aesthetics: I had gone undercover as this dull patient and I wanted to call it off. Perhaps my resentment was somewhat similar to that of many old people when they get the offer to go live in a rest home: Thank you, this is all fine and perfectly sensible, but no thanks, it is really not my thing.

And just like Norah Vincent eventually had a nervous breakdown, a serious identity crisis towards the end of her undercover adventure as a man, I had my crisis and made my most spectacular scene upon entering a supermarket for the first time after leaving the hospital as a newly-appointed Type 1 diabetic. I had hardly stepped into the store and taken a glance down the aisles when I panicked and just about fainted when every single item on the shelves seemed to disintegrate in front of my eyes into potentially harmful particles, hydrates:-0 that I would never be able to identify and never dare consume.

I'm fine now though. A daring consumer like the rest of you.