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Friendship. I’ve always been pretty shy and because of it, finding good friends has never been easy for me.

After I was diagnosed with diabetes, one of the first things I did after calling my mom was text my best friend at the time. Her reaction: That sucks. Mine: Yes, yes it does.

While learning the ropes of this new disease, I also learned how to navigate my friendships being newly diagnosed (and to this day I’m still learning). Who needs to know? Do I inject myself in front of them, or is that rude? Do I tell them the basics of low blood sugars?

Which friends need to learn how to give me a glucagon shot? Do I bring it up? Do I pretend it’s not there? Should I eat this cake in front of them? If I refuse the cake, am I giving them the wrong impression of diabetes? Will they think I can never have cake? Is it okay to ask them not to ask me about my blood sugar levels when I test?

Overall, diabetes doesn’t come up in most of my friendships (outside the D-OC, of course). Of my closest friendships, my childhood best friend doesn’t like to talk about it (I think this is because she worries), another friend has taken a “mother hen” approach and will at times wag her finger at my food choices and try to lecture me on the best way to treat my lows (at one point she said string cheese). Each friend has their own way of dealing with the fact that I have a chronic illness, but the fact is, diabetes doesn’t harm any of my friendships.

Recently, I learned my best friend (whom I refer to in my blog as Veronica) brought up something she did at my bachelorette party that I didn’t know about. After many hours and many drinks, my group of friends made their way back to the hotel room. I was already there with my friend May (we had the buddy system going on, and I went back earlier than the rest).

I remember being on the bed, the room spinning. Veronica came over with my contact case and meter in hand. “Take off your contacts and put them in here”

I obliged.

“Did you test your blood sugar”

“Wha? Yeah…I tested when I got here” I peered at her through a half closed eye.

“Hold out your hand” and with a prick, she tested for me (after a scwabble about my busted meter display, and me explaining that it pinged to my pump and I could see the numbers there).

What I didn’t know, was that Veronica also set an alarm on her phone to go off after a few hours, so that she could wake up and remind me to test my blood sugar again. I was amazed. How did she even know to do that? I didn’t even remember it.

Veronica and I hadn’t had the diabetes talk yet, I hadn’t explained low blood sugar with her, I never told her the affects of drinking with diabetes, I never asked her to make sure I was okay blood sugar wise that night. She just did it. When I asked her why, she said that she wasn’t questioning my ability to take care of myself, but that it’s easy to forget about things like that when we are all out having a good time. She wanted to make sure I was okay first hand.

Diabetes hasn’t harmed any of my relationships…but learning about Veronica’s actions that night, it certainly strengthened ours. She shouldn’t have had to keep an eye on me, but the fact that she did anyway speaks volumes about just how special of a friend she is. She took the time to learn about my disease simply because she wanted to know about it, for me. I love her so much for that!

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