my festive cocktail… I promise it’s actually
delicious (recipe at the bottom)
(cw: talk about death [specifically mine,
theoretically])
As of today I have (officially) stayed alive with Type
1 diabetes for ten years1. I’ve done a little bit of reading on the history of
Type 1 treatment, one of the first acute conditions
turned chronic through medical intervention (thank
you, Drs. Banting, Macleod, and Best). The longer I
live, the more “I would have died by now” milestones I
pass, and the more I am reminded of how grateful I am
for advances in diabetes treatment. I have passed the
“I would have lived this long on a starvation diet”
milestone. In a few years, I’ll probably make it past
the “lethal atherosclerosis” line, then the “renal
failure” line, assuming I retain access to current
diabetes and other medical technology2. I’ll probably also mostly avoid the non-lethal
sequelae, the blindness and the amputations and the
peripheral neuropathies. Apparently in a few years
I’ll need to start taking statins even if my
cholesterol is good, because diabetes often brings
vascular complications. As good as diabetes technology
is, I am, fundamentally, manually running one of the
primary metabolic loops in the human body. It’s
decidedly imperfect even when running at top
performance.
It's really tough for me to read this post which is, to a
substantial degree, about the hypothetical of my wife dying.
But I think it's worth sharing both as a celebration of the
fact that she is very much alive and as a meditation on what
life is like with only the ongoing application of modern
medical treatment between oneself and the void.
Also, I gotta say, I am pretty proud of that
beverage. The flavors meld really well—I wanted to make sure
the black sesame was still very much the primary note, which
it absolutely is, while giving it a bit of richness with the
scotch and cacao as well as a touch of liveliness with the
amaretto and absinthe. I might actually seek out more black
sesame ice cream to be able to make this for friends.
