A Self-Diagnosis

Hello, my name is Allison and I'm a workaholic.

I have a unique form of the disease called "diabetadvocosis." It's symptoms include at least two or more of the following:

- spending too much time reading diabetes blogs; checking and rechecking message boards for new messages;

- Googling the word "diabetes," "diabetes advocacy" or "diabetes research" at least once a day;

- doing background checks on anyone associated with diabetes;

- checking email before you have brushed your teeth to find out if your interviewee has sent his answers;

- staying up until 2 a.m. writing your dream list of diabetes researchers you'd like to interview (number one: Dr. Melton; number two: Dr. Brownlee; number three: Dr. Ricordi);

- when a new person asks you what you do in your freetime, your only answer (without lying) is: "Write about life with diabetes, read about diabetes research, argue about diabetes research, write long dissertations about the research on diabetes message boards, check diabetes message boards repeatedly for responses, volunteer at events to fund diabetes research, and mentor people about how not to go completely psycho from diabetes" (please note the irony in the aforementioned statement).

If you or someone you know has two or more of these symptoms, you may have Diabetadvocosis.

Luckily, there is treatment.

First, you must completely disconnect yourself from all mention of diabetes outside of the context of your own healthcare for approximately 2 hours everyday and for approximately 24-48 hours every weekend.

Which is what I will be doing from now on.

After checking Diabetes Teen Talk's message board on Saturday morning, I will be completely disconnected from my computer until Sunday evening after dinner, when I will check the message board once more.

I'll stay online for as long as necessary during the week to complete all my various assignments from people, but I am reclaiming my weekend.

I hope this will help me recover from a unique case of diabetes burnout, which involves people who not only take care of diabetes 24/7, but seem to talk about it 24/7.

I also hope it lasts longer than my little 100 day experiment, which really wasn't much of an experiment because I was still reading blogs, still updating my blog just not specifically about diabetes all the time, still checking my message board and still talking about diabetes all the time. The only thing I didn't do, really, was actively update a website.

I really need this to work. More than getting my late morning blood sugars down, more than waking up above 80 mg/dl, more than getting more exercise or not eating so many of those damn delicious Chips Ahoy cookies, I really need my life to look like a life, not a disease.

Cross your fingers. ::crosses fingers::