Does it hurt?

Jeremy stands there and offers the common question. Then, explaining that “most people want you to say ‘it doesn’t hurt’ or ‘you get used to it.’ Even though it’s impossible to get used to, you’re sticking a needle in your stomach!” I just watch him. His smile and demeanor mask the consistent pain and annoyance. He’s had it for nearly twenty-years now. He’s entitled to a few tirades.

“I mean, does it hurt when you bleed? Of course it does,” he answers before anyone could respond. I start thinking back to the many responses I’ve given people when they’ve asked as he laughs, the cap to a syringe between his lips. He draws back the plunger and I remember my mother watching my first time in the hospital bed. I was 20, so they put me in the pediatric ward, a room away from a kid with breathing tubes in his nose and a shakiness as he walked, the wheels squeaking in synchronicity on the mobile IV and oxygen tubes. She stood there, half in wonder, half in terror. What had happened to her son?

She took responsibility. I never understood why, but, then again, I’ve never been a parent. Especially at the time I didn’t understand. I just wanted her to stop, so I told her it was nothing. The doctor stood next to my bed on the day I was to be discharged, the day I would have to give myself a shot. I had attempted to skirt the issue until then. Telling the nursing staff I wasn’t ready. I’m sure they understood somewhat. My life, after all, had just spun wildly out of control.

Jeremy yanked the syringe out from the bottle of his Lantus, the same kind I use at night. Flicking the side to concentrate the bubbles and discharge them. A couple drops slid down the metal delivery system and I remembered how my mom’s eyes welled up. I was holding the needle, hovering over the pinched fat on my thigh for a while. Must have been two minutes, easy. The doctor just kept smiling and watching my leg, my mother preparing to cup her hands over her mouth and cry, and me, in a state of disbelief. What was this? How did I get here? I looked over at my mother and realized it didn’t matter. She didn’t need her son to be an existentialist here; she needed me to do it. Do it and make it seem like it didn’t matter. Like it was nothing. So, I did.

Jeremy then sat down and pulled up his shirt, grasping some fat around his stomach. His skin was so smooth and incident-free I got a little jealous over his experience. I could think of no other reason why his stomach wasn’t riddled with bruises, red dots, and bubbles under the skin from burst blood vessels. These are the things I hide from my mother and show to few friends. It’s not easy to avoid the dome or trickle down of blood in your first few years. Now, 90% of the time I’m golden, but that 10%...there’s enough of a percentage there to give me pause. Enough sharp, consistent pain as I graze or get nearby a nerve. Enough mornings standing in front of the mirror at nearly matching, dull purple bruises. Just standing there, willing them to go away. Poking at them to see if they still hurt, they do until they disappear, or counting the dots that unnaturally freckle between the hairs.

Jeremy’s movement to his stomach was fluid, something I feel like I’ve gotten down as well in my quarter-of-the-time dealing with it. The nonchalant pinching and plunging and holding for an entire minute and removing isn’t an easy task, but it’s pedestrian for him. As the rest of us in the room allow him the courtesy to vent, I’m wondering if people perceive my own unwillingness to hide my “disease” to the world the way they look at Jeremy. Do they shrug it off? Are they used to it? Do they think it’s an act of defiance?

He recaps the syringe and sits it next to him on the couch, returning the vial of clear, stings your nostrils fluid to the bag at his feet. I then catch wind of the smell. The stereotypical medicine smell: sterile with an acute sting deep in the nostrils. Or like the green, roll-on bottle of Absorbing Jr. my dad would apply to his pre-arthritised joints and onto my knee when I thought that was the only physical problem I had.

“If you don’t say something like that they brace themselves like I’m going to reach over and stab them or something,” or that they feel the need to share in the experience, I think. They bite or try to swallow their bottom lip. It’s better to just comfort them, I think. Not let them worry. If people knew what it was like they’d coddle us. My mother specifically. So, Jeremy pushes back while I try and reassure those around me, those who care so much they gird themselves like I did before the first nurse pinched behind my arm. I’m not sure if that’s his standard response, but even if it were it would be understandable. Type-One diabetics have a right, I think, to get angry from time to time. We didn’t cause this. Didn’t not take care of ourselves. We’re just stuck with this thing that requires not only care of our own wellbeing but of those around us.

I sat there listening to him chuckle some more at the absurdity his life has become. Twenty-eight, diabetic, and at more frequent risk of spikes or drops in his blood sugar I wonder if his parents responded the way mine did. With guilt and my need to comfort them. And I remember the response I gave earlier that day to a friend who saw me inject for the first time, “sometimes, when you hit the wrong spot, it still does hurts. A lot.”