I had the most interesting thing happen to me over the weekend. As most of you know, I live in an extremely small town. Until I was in high school, the whole county only had 2 stoplights. A few years ago, when I was college, our town was blessed to have 2 ethnic restaurants move into our town. This would have been unheard of when I was younger. The closest thing we had to ethnic was the Taco Bell we got when I was in high school!! :D
One of the restaurants, my brother helped with the construction and I frequent at least a couple of times per month. The brothers who run it are very nice people. As often as I am in there, in combination with them knowing my brother, they know who I am.
I never hide my diabetes. I guess part of having a pump is naturally discrete. When I was in there over the weekend with a friend of mine, I got out my meter to test right before eating. As one of the guys who runs the restaurant came up, he was shocked, wanting to know what I was doing. He wasn't rude, just curious. I explained that I was diabetic and I was on an insulin pump.
I took out my pump to bolus and showed him that it had medicine in it.
He asked several questions, the biggest one being "How long?". When I told him that I had been a diabetic for years, he was shocked. He had never known that I was in all the years I've been coming in there.
I got up to go get my food (buffet style) and came back to my table and he said to me, "I should be nice to you." Keep in mind that this guy makes it a habit to pick on me when I'm in there. It's just something he does. And it's kind of funny cause I give back as good as I get.
It shocked me a little when he said that he thought he should be nice to me. So I said, before I thought too much about it, "Don't be nice to me 'cause you feel sorry for me."
The conversation ended at that point because my friend and I were eating and he was working, but that stuck in my head. I haven't had anyone say anything like that to me in years. It's a little disheartening to think that people might treat me differently due to my diabetes.
Has anything like this ever happened to you?
2 comments:
Wow! How weird is that? Well, maybe it just made him see you in a new light. :P
Since Kacey is newly diagnosed, we're still getting the "pity party" and when we tell friends we havent seen in a while we get the "Omg Im so sorry!" and my response is usually "I don't want your sympathy, I want a CURE!" and then they reply with "Oh this isnt something she will outgrow is she loses weight?" Grrrrr! Ignorance combined with the fact they're calling my child fat...it sucks! I'm sure that we're gonna run into things like you did the rest of her life and I guess it depends on the situation as to how we handle it :)
Post a Comment