That diabetic chip on my shoulder

Once again, a long work week has caught up with me. On top of it, in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago my pump stopped delivering insulin properly (like it periodically does), and I didn't wake up enough to recognize it for a good while. By the time I did, I had been tossing for a couple of hours; then it took another couple of hours for my blood sugar to come down enough for me to go back to sleep. But then, sleep loss is so frequent when you have a kid, I barely registered it the next day. I guess it's a bit like the training doctors go through.

I do sometimes worry that the sleep loss will affect my driving, but then I find I'm one of the safest drivers on the road, even when tired. And if I did ever pull a real all-nighter, I wouldn't let myself drive. Ironic, isn't it? Because I periodically find myself having to defend my right to drive. The latest was last year; when I went to renew my licence, I was confronted with a new form (new in that I'd never seen such a form in all my 20-some years of driving) that I had to get my doctor to sign, then submit to some committee at the DMV for review. The form, of course, was to state that I'm competent to drive - because of my diabetes.

Apparently, Massachusetts had instituted a new law. Besides that, they'd also decided to stop alerting people when we need to renew our licences (and of course, they didn't notify anyone that they'd suddenly stopped notifying us!), so I had only a few days in which to do so - and most of them were over the weekend, when the doctor was unavailable. It took some frantic last-minute calls and a quick trip to the doctor to get the form signed in time so that I could get to work the following Monday.

Actually, I did see a similar form once: the day I first went to take the test to get my licence, at age 16. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, yet the dour woman at the desk handed me a form for my doctor to sign, to prove I had no amputations. I felt like screaming, "do I look like I have any?!? I passed the test the following week. The instructor even liked the way I used the horn, lightly, when someone blocked the road.

Now, I wouldn't mind the harassment so much if it weren't for all the - ahem - bozos I have to avoid on the road every day, on their phones or texting, weaving and not even realizing it, or realizing it and not caring, because who's going to challenge them? Whereas I am always extra-careful because I live in fear that someone will blame my diabetes if I have an accident. Especially since pregnancy, I've been sure to test before getting behind the wheel, and I simply don't drive if I go low, until I get my blood sugar up to at least 70 mg/dL (which is rarely an issue since pregnancy). I've often been complimented on my driving, and (knock on wood) never caused an accident or gotten a speeding ticket. Yet I think a lot of my casual acquaintances don't accept rides from me because they're afraid - perhaps not even consciously, but still, afraid that I might not be competent. (I had reason to think so, again, this week; but who's counting?)

Similarly, early in my daughter's life I sensed that some people were nervous about whether I could handle her - literally, whether I might drop her. Granted, I was physically impaired for a while, having had a C-section that didn't heal right (it took two months of daily visits from nurses to change out bandages, and even now the scar still twinges occasionally).

But anyone who really knows me would know that I am hyper-vigilant, and that I'm more careful than anyone, both with my driving and with my precious child. If there's one thing I have at least as much of as any non-diabetic mom, it's the mom hormones! So I would not do anything to endanger her, whether intentionally or through neglect. But I also have that chip on my shoulder about diabetes, that I am not ever going to even leave the door open a crack, to let someone say I can't do something because of it.

Sometimes I think I'm just being paranoid - that people aren't really doubting my competence as often as I think they are. But my DMV experiences, and many others, make me think they do - sometimes without really being aware of it themselves. If I had the chance, I'd say to them, yes, diabetes can make driving risky, but no more so than having poor eye sight, and just as correctable. Yes, some people have a problem with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) unawareness, but I'm currently not one of them - and when I was, briefly, during early pregnancy, I was even more vigilant about testing, and I also used a continuous glucose monitor that beeped to tell me when I ran low. So still, just a correctable as myopia (gee, myopia, that sounds scary, doesn't it?).

So, how about you - have you had experiences with people doubting your competence because you have diabetes? Did you confront people, or let it pass? Or were you not even given a chance to confront?