Why should I hide?

I was testing my blood sugar at a basketball tournament this weekend and it got me to thinking about where I test and who I test in front of.

I’ll start with where I do not hide. When I’m at home I will do any of my diabetes related items, test, inject, insert sensors etc. Most of my close family knows about my diabetes and for that matter there are at least 7 people that I would consider my close family that have diabetes. I never think twice about doing diabetes stuff in front of all of them.

The next place to talk about is when I am out in public around strangers, once again this is a place that I really don’t care who sees me do the diabetic stuff. In fact I kind of enjoy testing amongst strangers. I like to watch peoples reactions, see the look on there face, trying to figure out just what the heck I am doing.

The last place to talk about is at work. For me work falls into two categories, one that would be closely related to the family category and one that falls out in left field. While I am at my main office I will do all of the diabetes things in front of all of my day to day coworkers. I am pretty comfortable with all of my coworkers, which when I think about that it seems odd. At my main office there are around 60 employees. When I think about that number of people and the fact that I don’t really see any of them outside of work it makes me wonder how I have become so comfortable around them that I don’t hide my diabetes. I guess that last sentence says something about the atmosphere that I work in.

Now for the left field category. This would be my business contacts. I have about two to three suppliers that come into my office each week and I go on about six business related trips a year. I’m not sure why, but I’m just not comfortable testing in front of these people. I would like to think of these people as just… well people. For some reason I try not to do any of my diabetes related stuff in front of this group of people. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I don’t want to talk about it with them or maybe subconsciously I think they will see diabetes as a sign of weakness. A lot of my suppliers in the industry that I work in are still way behind the times, some more so than others. Computers are very new to most of my suppliers and the industry overall is still in the beginning of understanding technology. With that being said I think, or maybe I just feel like diabetes would be a subject that is very misunderstood in this industry.

I think from here forward I will try to get more comfortable with doing my diabetes stuff in front of whoever is in front of me. Being self conscious about diabetes could cost me more than a business relationship of two.