Normal people like you do worry about getting fat, but Type I diabetics have to worry about a super-special type of fat. I’ll bet you know what that’s called now: FUPA, or Fat Upper Pubic Area. Google it. Because we have to inject ourselves 6-plus times a day in our bellies, we are prone to special little fat deposits called lipohypertrophy that makes it look like we have asses on our stomachs. I’m not even kidding. Check out a case study from a medical journal, above. (Admittedly, this picture shows one of the worst cases on record, and newer insulins are supposed to cut down on this.)
Bet you’ll never say, “Had one too many tacos last night and now I feel sooooo fat!” again. Because you don’t have to worry so much about the dreaded FUPA you’re just a damn wuss.
2. You don’t have to look like a drug addict/terrorist unless you’re a drug addict.
Is this man a drug smuggler or an innocent diabetic? OR BOTH!! [Image]
Try injecting yourself with insulin on the train ONCE, and you’ll know what it feels like to not be a prissy priss. “That’s weird,” they say. “You should have warned us, my daughter faints when she sees needles!” they say. Then their daughters faint. Pussies. Try going on a date with a really hot guy, then spending 10 minutes in the sushi restaurant bathroom freaking out because you brought the wrong insulin, and you’ll somehow have to explain, at some point, why you even pretended you didn’t have diabetes in the first place instead of just whipping out your insulin pen like some phallus at the low-lit dinner table. At least security doesn’t make you “touch it.” Yes, they ask me to touch my implanted glucose sensor every time.
3. Ever passed out at a party because you were too drunk to func and regretted it later when you woke up with popsicle sticks in your nostrils?
Woke up hungover and had to do the walk of shame? Poor baby. Try “waking up” from low blood sugar 10 minutes after you-still-don’t-remember-what-happened, clutching 10 different candy-bar wrappers and the hand of the snack-bar lady as people around you whisper and give you blank stares.
At 3 p.m. on a work day. That’s awkward.
I have to eat things like this almost every day. And, I’ll be honest, they are only sometimes disgusting.
4. Diabetes still wins the award for un-sexiest disease ever.
Think your foot fungus is gross? Do you suffer from leaky bowels, even? Tough luck, but having diabetes is even LESS sexy.
This is in no small part thanks to infomercials featuring people like Wilford Brimley. Wilford is SO un-sexy, in fact, that his commercials have inspired parodies and infinite cat-with-mustache jokes.
And since 90 percent of diabetics in general are overweight, our spokespeople aren’t hunks like Lance Armstrong or even surprisingly smart like Stephen Hawking. They all seem to be old ladies in cardigans, uncertainly riding their bikes without helmets in nude-colored subdivisions in the Midwest. And Paula Deen. People are just SHOCKED when you say the D word when you’re young and less than 200 pounds. “But you’re not fat!!!” they say. Those noobs are just confused about the difference between Type I and Type II.
So, next time you complain about how HARD it is to be a young professional millennial in the crowded, faceless city or how MANY times your neighborhood has gentrified in the last hundred years, just remember: Shut up, healthy person. You’re a fucking wuss. But now you’re a fucking wuss who knows four more things ’bout diabeetus.
Eve Lampenfeld is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.