Today’s topic is The Cost of a Chronic Illness. Insulin and other diabetes medications and supplies can be costly. Here in the US, insurance status and age (as in Medicare eligibility) can impact both the cost and coverage. So today, let’s discuss how cost impacts our diabetes care. Do you have advice to share? For those outside the US, is cost a concern? Are there other factors such as accessibility or education that cause barriers to your diabetes care? (This topic was inspired by suggestions from Rick and Jen.)The financial cost of life with diabetes has been a very hot topic lately. Here in the U.S., costs are rising and the political climate has a lot of us feeling fearful about the future. I don’t know what will happen and I’m honestly scared. But on the same token, I know I’ve been very lucky. I’ve never had to go without my medications. I’ve always had good insurance. Things certainly aren’t cheap, but we’ve never had to choose between paying bills or buying food or purchasing diabetes supplies. I know how lucky and privileged I’ve been so far.
So when I think about the cost of my chronic illness, it isn’t always the dollars I’m thinking of. Instead, it’s less tangible things. Diabetes costs me countless hours of sleep treating middle of the night lows or correcting stubborn overnight highs. I’ve paid with so many tears of frustration when I’ve tried my hardest and things still don’t go well. It costs me guilt when I see the worry in my husband’s eye or hear the panic in his voice when he’s leaving me a second voicemail and I haven’t answered the phone. Diabetes charges a lot in energy and brain power just to keep myself alive. It has repossessed my nights when plans are cancelled because out of range blood sugars have left me too exhausted to go out.I know there will be many powerful posts shared today and in the future about the huge financial cost of diabetes. But life with a chronic illness costs so much more than dollars and cents.
You can find more Cost of a Chronic Illness posts listed here.
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Today’s topic is Diabetes and The Unexpected. Diabetes can sometimes seem to play by a rulebook that makes no sense, tossing out unexpected challenges at random. What are your best tips for being prepared when the unexpected happens? Or, take this topic another way and tell us about some good things diabetes has brought into your, or your loved one’s, life that you never could have expected? (Thank you, 
Who can participate in Diabetes Blog Week? DBlog Week is open to anyone who blogs about diabetes - be it Type 1, Type 2, LADA, gestational, etc., and it’s also for parents, spouses, loved ones and caregivers to someone else with diabetes. If you blog about diabetes in any capacity, please join us! The more perspectives that are shared the more connections we can make and understanding we can foster. If you don’t have a blog but have thought about starting one, now is the perfect time. There are free blogging sites (such as 
Sometimes I think of the Diabetes Online Community (or DOC) as a huge beach, and each of us are the tiny grains of sand that make up our beach. Sometimes we quietly lay there, sometimes we drift in and out with the tides, and sometimes we come together and do something huge. When that happens, I see us as a big beautiful sandcastle.
“Ouch!”
One evening I was at a friend’s apartment for a party. The bathrooms in our on-campus apartments had storage closets with sliding doors for stuff to be stowed. Someone had left the sliding door open, and I couldn’t help but notice an oh-so-familiar-to-me box of syringes. I wondered who it could belong to and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I asked my friend about it. As it turns out, his roommate, who I didn’t know all that well, had diabetes. “Yeah, he always ends up in the hospital because he'll eat a big bag of M&Ms.” I was kind of shocked. Shocked because I wasn’t the only one with diabetes. Shocked because I wasn't the only one who wasn't doing very well with my diabetes management. And also shocked because this poor guy kept ending up in the hospital. After all, I ate more than my fair share of M&Ms as well, but I was okay. I couldn’t imagine what I was doing, or actually not doing, could land me in the hospital.
