i love what you said about parents with diabetes. it’s a lot to deal with and i think of my own daughter as an adult in the future, if she decides to have kids (she told me after she was first diagnosed that she thought she would adopt, but we’ve not spoken of it recently).

anyway, thanks as always for something to think about.

I do other things despite diabetes.

And I do some things just to spite diabetes.

But at the end of the day, I’m willing to bet that everything I can do with diabetes I could do without diabetes so really, it’s other people’s perceptions of what I can or cannot do that I’m overcoming….not my diabetes.

I’m not as awesome athletically as the folks you mentioned–and that has nothing to do with diabetes–but I get the “Look at what you’re accomplishing despite/with/because of diabetes!” compliment all the time. I recognize that diabetes is a factor (and the one that’s least in my control right now) but it’s not the biggest part of either my results or my motivation. That would be the part that comes by putting in day after day of hard work, even when I don’t want to and when diabetes presents a challenge. (The pros and the elites feel the same way, too, of course.)

Sure, I think about diabetes sometimes when I’m training and racing, partly to make sure I’m doing the right thing to achieve my best performance, but often it’s with the mental image of beating this disease like a piñata when I need a little bit of extra motivation.

Perhaps people are reacting to the fact that I *am* out there day after day doing what I need to do to compete. People (including myself) can find so many reasons for not doing so many of the things that we know we should. I think it’s natural for people with and without diabetes to want to acknowledge our accomplishments as worthy of a little extra attention because *we didn’t give in* to whatever impediments or excuses might come our way.

So, as much as I dislike hearing this despite/because business as part of a compliment and wish that people would just focus on the accomplishment, I think I finally get where people are coming from. (Thanks for prompting me to think about this more!)