In the final stretch of Wego Health’s 30 day challenge to juice everything I eat, including juice write about my health activism, today’s prompt is to talk about a day in which I would have liked it to be worry-free. How would have impacted the day?

It’s too easy to pick a “special day”. Sure, my wedding day (both of them, because you know, if you like it, do it more than once…) or a birthday or convocation or the day I gave birth to my daughter or something like that, but really… what I want?

Any day without diabetes decisions.

To wake up in the morning, well rested and laze beneath the covers for a few minutes.

(Instead of checking my CGM. Did I drop overnight? Rise overnight? Sleep through an alarm? Why did my blood sugar do that?)

Slip out of bed and into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

(Instead of grabbing my meter, checking my blood, calibrating if necessary, bolus correction or grabbing the bedside juice box, waiting for the low blood pressure rush to my head upon rising from probably vagus nerve damage…and then get up.)

Stick my head in the fridge to decide on a cinnamon roll with icing or cold cereal or a gooey piece of chocolate cake from the night before. Breakfast is served.

(Instead of having an argument with myself about the evils of cold cereal and what it would do to my most likely already precarious blood sugar and slamming the door to the fridge while dosing for the half and half for a cup of coffee which will end up being my breakfast until my stomach calms down from the delayed gastric emptying.)

Poking my head out the door and instantly deciding to step outside for a leisurely walk.

(Instead of packing a rucksack full of supplies to march around my neighborhood. Glucose tabs, water, check your shoes and socks for chafing which could cause a foot infection, while wondering if I should even walk at all because if I drop rapidly and I was alone and unable to get back to the house would it be worth it? Hint: I end up sitting on the couch.)

Call friends for a day of frivolous trying on of 15 outfits that we’ll never buy while sucking down an iced chai latte. 

(Instead of deciding that unclipping my pump every single time I went into the dressing room was just too much of a hassle and so I just try on 5 outfits that I’ll never buy while sucking down a sugar free soda.)

Do I need to go on?

There’s so such thing as a worry-free day, but I’d take one that didn’t require me to make so many decisions that could severely impact my health if I didn’t make them wisely. They have a term for it: decision fatigue. I love this article about it. (Doesn’t make me feel better about my decision fatigue, but at least I’m in good company.) It’s a very long article, but there is a section in there about glucose - and they’re spot on.

According to this article in Psychology Today, the average person makes 70 conscious decisions each day. I make that before I leave the house in the morning! It’s no wonder people with diabetes and their family members are exhausted.

So, my “worry free day” doesn’t need to be special. It just needs to not be about diabetes decisions. That would be divine. (And if it had a chai tea latte in it, that would be super duper divine.)