So I’m reading Cheryl Alkon‘s book “Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-Existing Diabetes” to gain more insight from women that have “been there before.” Alkon is a Type 1 diabetic and writes about her experiences and interviews other T1s and T2s about their pregnancies. Kind of like a D-friendly “What to Expect While You’re Expecting.” Because honestly, the first thing Google pops up about diabetic pregnancies are 1) Horror stories and 2) GD.
One of the interviews stuck out after I read it. The new mom basically said that balancing her diabetes during pregnancy and prior to pregnancy was similar to having another full time job. Finally, a well thought out simile. Especially since I’ve spent the last 2 days at my desk preoccupied with my blood sugars not coming down than my actual work load.
Think about it. We are control freaks by nature; attempting to grapple on to a disease that doesn’t want to be controlled and yet we still try anyway. We can sit hour-by-hour testing, worrying about what we just ate, calculating insulin doses to make up for errors, correcting, re-correcting, exercising to make sugars come down, downing Skittles when we’ve come down too much, going to doctor appointments, taking phone appointments, meticulously looking at all nutrition labels while grocery shopping…
Seriously, for the amount of hours I spend, I should get paid for trying to please this unruly boss. I’d make a fortune.
Or at least I should be able to add it to my resume qualifications.
See Jen Dance 
I’ve been wanting to add this to my resume for the longest time. It shows that I’m disciplined, analytical, persistent, problem-solving, and cost-conscious.
But then, it also shows that I’d probably pass on higher health-care costs and take more time off of work than the non-D candidate. So they might just hire the other guy.
If you find a way to eloquently present the skills mastered through a life of diabetes on a resume, I’d love to hear it!
I’d add too that simply controlling the issues of pregnancy can be a full time job. No, I’m not diabetic, but depending on your personality pregnancy is a cluster of trying to make sense of what you are feeling, whether it’s normal, whether you can function. I was so exhausted my first trimester with the twins that I ended up reducing my work schedule to 6 hour days because I couldn’t function. If you are a control freak or fearful (as I am and was after battling infertility and using IVF to get pregnant), pregnancy itself is this whole new list of things to stress over.
I guess my point is that you will want to ensure you build into your environment space to handle all of these things.