Nothing is Sweet, But They Call it Sugar Disease
Poem about life with diabetes
Nothing is sweet, but they call it “sugar disease”.
There is no sweetness in life,
No sweetness in a lifetime diagnosis,
No sweetness in hourly finger-pricking,
No sweetness in insulin shots,
No sweetness in carb-counting,
Definitely no sweetness in my coffee.
No sweetness in inability to join get-togethers,
No sweetness in maths before meal,
No sweetness in foreign pumps in my body,
No sweetness in being “not-normal”,
Definitely no sweetness in my cake.
No sweetness in not having a life-partner,
No sweetness in regular doctor’s bills,
No sweetness in being called diabetic,
No sweetness in having junky belly,
Definitely no sweetness in my sugar disease.
No sweetness in risky pregnancy,
No sweetness in risky child-birth,
No sweetness in being blamed for diabetic child,
No sweetness in being hated from own child,
Definitely no sweetness in my name “PWD”.
No sweetness in inability to repeat this “un-sweetness" in own’s child life,
No sweetness in giving my family, a family diagnosis,
No sweetness in life filled with medical jargons,
No sweetness in living but dying every single day,
Definitely no sweetness in my recurrent hypoglycemic episodes.
No sweetness in early-blindness,
No sweetness in kidney-failure,
No sweetness in heart-attack,
No sweetness in diabetic-foot,
Definitely no sweetness in my slow-death.
This poem is dedicated to all people living with diabetes. Most importantly to the people, who have lost their identities to the chronic disease and either called diabetic or PWD.
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Anish Lamichhane is a medical doctor from Germany. He has his interests in medical oncology (cancer medicine), psychiatry (mental health medicine), palliative care and digitalization of health care. He likes to present health stories in a non-traditional way with poetry and health education pieces. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out a monthly newsletter with new selected stories.