Cyberbetic

I’m about to go and have the training I need to start using my diabetic pump. I’m quite excited and a little bit anxious about it all. Excitement is mostly due to never having to inject five times a day ever again. Anxious because there is a lot to learn, and I’m tired and a bit sunburnt. I’m scared that I will only take a handful of things in before confining myself to just fiddle with it in the way I would a new phone and committing myself to several hypo attacks because I’ve tried to change the backdrop or some such. It doesn’t have a backdrop. I should be ok. I’m also a tad worried that I’ll get injection withdrawal symptoms. That may sound pretty odd, but I’ve been injecting myself with insulin since I was 7 years old and my parents did it for me from 4 to 7, so that’s most of my life so far. Suddenly I’ll never have to do it again, force of habit may mean I have to just stick a sewing needle in my arm every few hours till I can wean myself of it.

I’m also slightly worried about the fact that the pump is attached to you. I can take it off when I want, for an hour or so, and its not heavy or anything, but I’m just not great at that sort of stuff. Its the fact that being recently single makes me worry that that the discovery that I’m connected to a tiny pump may not be the whirlwind of sexiness most ladies want. I remember just before university when my dentist offered me a way to pull up the tooth on the right hand side of my jaw that has never grown. It sounded good till he said it would require a tiny chain brace pulley system for at least a year. The other alternative was that no one would ever really notice and nothing would happen. I couldn’t help but feel, before embarking on the world of university mayhem, that what he was saying was the equivalent of ‘I could punch you in the face, or not’ or ‘you could date women at university, or we could make you a metal mouthed monstrosity’. I opted to leave it be and now I have a handy place to put straws when drinking milkshakes.

The pump is different to that though. Firstly it will make a difference to my life, hugely so. Secondly, it looks pretty damn sleek and cool and comes with a blood test kit that bluetooths the results to the pump and then the pump injects me with what I need. Amazing. This is totally the future. I’m hoping that later installments will come with 3D glasses that can bluetooth to the blood test kit when I eat popcorn (not that this will really help) and a wii-mote. Either way, today, as GZA of the Wu-Tang says ‘everything changes’.

A quick addendum before I go and become a cyber diabetic/cyberbetic: Lounge on the Farm was excellent yesterday. A truly truly brilliant festival that wasn’t even marred by the fact I now have two very brown lower arms and a very brown face, but an extremely white everywhere else. I’m worried the only way to even this tan out would be to wear long gloves and a balaclava and little all else. Which I can only see as getting me kicked out of the park/swimming pool/anywhere.

Also I’m previewing at Outside Of The Box in Kingston tonight. Its a bloody lovely club and I’m on with the excellent Jon Richardson, so well worth heading along if you can. All details are at:

http://www.outsidetheboxcomedy.co.uk/