If my diabetes were an animal that made sense I would go with a bear. Which coincidentally is my friend Martin’s Hypoglycemia Spirit Animal. (Yeah, that’s right I linked to Kim who did this as a guest post for Martin on her site. You figure out the math on that one.) The bear makes sense on some levels for the danger or animal lurking inside. I mean it seems all sorts of controlled or at least in check, but you come between the momma bear and her cubs and well the proverbial ship hits the fan and you are floundering out of the way of the beast in you.

Yet to be honest with you, I think I need to go beyond that and find my own diabetes spirit animal. I wish I was a better artist, but we will get to that at a later time or date. Truthfully, I think my diabetes spirit animal would be a penguin. Here me out. I know it seems all strange, but let me get the connection going here. The penguin is that animal at least for me, that I have tons of around. I think they are pretty cool and awesome. They are very formal and very reserved well if you think about them all tuxedoed up (don’t think that is word, but I made a noun a vowel again). The penguin is all sorts of nice and adorable, when it is in control. Plus they are fine to watch. (I love the fact that you can hear penguin sounds in the mix too. When I get bored or stressed sometimes I watch the penguin antics.)

Yet at the end of the day, would you really want to invite a penguin to the party, even when it is all formaled up. (Yep, just verbed formal too.) The penguin is an animal. That is it, you can tame it. You can try to control it, yet when it’s base animal instincts are triggered, you have a wild animal that is hard to control. This is what diabetes is like too. You can dress it up pretty, you can treat it nice, you can make sure you don’t anger it so to speak. Yet it takes one small thing to really just set it off and you are in trouble. The insulin, the carb counting, the cgm, the pump, …. they can only go so far. You can be perfect often and most of the time if you are unbelievably clever and capable. Yet all it takes is one small thing to upset the balance of the world and you are stuck facing the low blood sugar or the high blood sugar. At this point you are trying to do damage control and not let things get worse.

We always hope not this is not the case, but yeah, I am letting my diabetes be a penguin.

Do you know how much of a PITA it is to draw a spirit animal with a track pad?? I need to find where I left my wireless mouse. Stat!