The Death of Summer

Yesterday, my summer ended. It had been weighing on me more this year than any other year in recent memory. I have been walking towards this date like I was being led to my execution.

During the last few weeks of summer, I tried to ignore it. I tried to bargain my way out of it somehow. I have even mourned for the fast approaching date.

And before you write me off as some spoiled brat who cannot even handle the concept of work, please hold off. I understand the amazing privilege I have in getting ten weeks off a year to bask in the summer sun, but even during this time, I am not a stranger to hard work.

Even during my ten-week “vacation” I am working non-stop on the Sea Peptide Salties. I am working non-stop as a mother and wife. I am constantly managing my five or so chronic medical conditions.

It’s not as if my summer is free from work.

I think the reason I am having such a hard time with this years impending work schedule is because for the first time in over twelve years, I am finally healthy.

Yes, I have multiple medical issues, but I finally feel like I finally have a good system for managing each of them. They have each taken me by surprise at times, but with enough surprise attacks I have built systems for dealing with each one.

The untethered regimen has brought my diabetes care to a new high. My blood sugars are more stable than I ever thought they would be.

My asthma is now being controlled by a daily medication that although it doesn’t eliminate all attacks, most days I run at around 80% lung capacity, it doesn’t have the insane side effects that came with another medicine I tried last year, which brought the most severe and swift depression I have ever felt.

My thyroid, which went berserk nine years ago and blew up my life for a full seven years, has been obliterated by radioactive iodine, and I have finally found a perfect system of replacement thyroid meds. And I have gained back the strength that an overactive thyroid ripped from my body.

I am finally strong and relaxed and not entirely focused on the fatigue that has my constant bedfellow for the last decade from managing so many flaws in my physical makeup.

And all of that strength which I have worked for over the last decade will be slowly stripped from my body again.

I know many people think that teaching is an easy job where I go to babysit a few pleasant kids for a few hours a day while I try to teach them a thing or two.

Over the course of the next ten months, I will slowly lose my voice from trying to project in a building that was designed by architects who know nothing of the sound dynamics in a classroom.

I will catch at least ten colds and flus most of which will trigger my asthmatic bronchitis and require another round of steroids which will tweak my blood sugars beyond recognition and make it impossible for me to work out for weeks sometimes which, in turn, will make blood sugar management even worse.

The levels of thyroid which I have worked out precisely will need to change with the changing amounts of physical and mental stress of work and will need to be adjusted, but only after they have done enough damage in my body to make me stop my never ending cycle of work and life responsibilities to take notice.

Usually this means aggravated sleep for days followed by brain fog from the lack of sleep and an uncharacteristically short temper. Then adjustments are made and about a month of re-regulating.

All of this I have to willingly walk back into.

I have to go back.

I have to keep this job.

Because, although this job is the one that will challenge my health more than anything I have ever known, it is also the job that has medical benefits, benefits that allow me to have my Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor and pays for the Levemir and the pump that delivers my Humalog, and the inhalers, steroids, thyroid meds, and doctor’s visits.

The number one consideration in choosing my employment has been not passion or matching my particular skill set, but what job has reliable medical benefits and will not penalize me for being out sick. That’s it.

Diabetes has affected even this aspect of my life down to the very job I chose.