Help Us Change Melissa’s Odds

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If you’ve ever been in the emergency room or admitted into a hospital, you know that clicking sound that your IV machine makes. That even-tempo clicking noise that, after a while, is drowned out of your line of hearing. That beep that indicates a dose of fluids has been completed slowly starts to mean less. That needle that is taped into your arm simply becomes the reason you can’t bend your arm, merely a part of you. The itchiness of the tape on your skin fades away, as you become immune to the tickle. The dripping fluid into your tube becomes nothing but a byproduct of that once annoying clicking sound. Drip, drop, drip, drop. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Click, click, click. All of these noises become background noise in your brain. Your thoughts are simply flowing through your brain at the tempo of the IV machine. And pushing around the IV machine by the middle pole that holds it up becomes the way you walk. As if your arm was always unable to be bent. As if you always had to walk around with some machine attached to you. As if that clicking sound had been there since you were born. As if fluids were always dripping into a tube that connected you to an IV machine. As if that skin tape was a flap of your skin and that needle was always in there. As if that loud beep was something you had heard daily for your entire life thus far.

After nine years of Diabetes, these feelings are very apparent. I feel that I have always had my “IV machine” attached to me, and that the clicking sound has always been there, and that I’ve always had a pump site in me, and that I’ve always needed a dose of insulin through my pump machine. For nine years, my pump has beeped regularly. For nine years, my skin has always been impaled with a plastic catheter somewhere on one of five places; my thigh, my stomach, my butt, my lower back, or my arm. For nine years, I have had to walk around with my insulin pump, and all the necessities for the “just-in-case” situation that almost never happens. For nine years, I have heard that clicking sound over and over and over again. These things have simply become a part of my life style and, trust me, they become too much of a habit in my life. I have gotten so bored with the sounds and the “needs” of this machine, it has lost all meaning in my life. It is no longer interesting. It is no longer something I really pay much attention to. It is no longer something I take the time to explain to people. It is merely a part of me. It is a part of my body that should work, but doesn’t. And so I have a computerized version of my failed organ outside my body. Every part of my disease has become routine and I still manage to go off of my routine once in a while. I still find myself not caring enough to take care of my disease because it’s too bothersome to actually care for. It doesn’t mean enough to me because it has been around for long enough.

Much like after about one day of being attached to that IV machine everything about it fades away, my insulin pump has the same effect. After about three years of this disease I had lost all interest in caring for it for myself. I care for it because others care about it. I care for it because I know if I don’t, I’ll have a bad doctor’s visit. I care for it because I know that I could get VERY sick because of it, hence why I have experienced IV machines so many times. I care for it because no matter what, it won’t go away.

Please consider making a Fund A Cure donation in honor of Melissa and others living with T1D by clicking here.

Greco, Melissa