Living with diabetes (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about just one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly! Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes. Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!
One great thing I do for myself is forgive my mistakes and remind myself that we all have bad days. All my life I’ve dealt with a lot of self-blame for everything that happens, and diabetes makes things a little bit harder. After all, there is a lot of stigma when it comes to type 2 because “we did this to ourselves.” Can I have a better control of my diabetes and make better choices? Absolutely. But like Karen’s introduction says, we aren’t perfect.
I think living with diabetes and interacting with the DOC has increased my sense of compassion because I really try to put myself in other people’s shoes regarding the many frustrations that come with this condition. I care, a lot! That is my one great thing… the need to connect, the need to understand, the need to remind people that it’s OK to mess up because every day is a new beginning.
I like to sit with people like Marie, who have a positive attitude toward life’s challenges. We laugh at her Dexcom and I ask her to teach me how she manages her type 1 diabetes. I care, I want to get to know people and see how things work for them.
It seems the most popular thing about Diabetes Blog Week is that it helps us find blogs we weren’t reading yet and connect with some new blog friends. With that in mind, let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by making some new connections. Think about the d-blogs you read that you think we may not know about and introduce us to one that you love!! Let’s all find a new friend today!
Yes! D-Blog Week is here, thanks to the most wonderful Karen. The first post of the weeks is about finding new friends in the Diabetes Online Community. We all read all kinds of blogs, we all have some we like more than others; there are also people who are more well known than others. So it’s fun to discover new posts to read.
I’m really bad at keeping up with my blog roll, but I do try to check my RSS feed reader at least a few times a week. But it makes me very happy when I find a new type 2 blog because I can related more closely to the person. So I’m going to present My Fall From Grace, a blog I started reading recently written by a woman with type 2 diabetes. We all seem to struggle with the same things, and we all try our best.
Check my blogroll for more goodies. And if you have a blog to recommend, please leave a comment!
Life throws a lot of curve balls your way. Some are more difficult to handle than others, some are simply devastating. But when dealing with a chronic disease, no matter how hard life gets sometimes, you need to make sure that your body works even if your mind is in turmoil. One thing is the struggle of depression, something you have some kind of control over… another thing is a life crisis you pretty much have little control over (other than the fact that you have to roll with the punches and make the best out of it). When problems take all of your mental capacity, you need to stop and think “Hey, I have to take care of myself.” And that isn’t too easy.
For people with type 2 diabetes, management is a lot about what we eat and when we eat. What happens when we don’t want to eat? I have no idea. The body has a weird way of dealing with stress. It’s almost like all your basic needs shut down so you can do the whole fight or flight thing and still function normally. Anxiety takes over and it makes you oblivious of everything else… yet you feel physically OK. But are you really OK?
I’ll be honest here. I haven’t checked my blood sugar in more than 2 weeks. That’s because I haven’t been eating much for that period of time. However, I’m pretty sure that my blood glucose levels can be as high as the stress ones and I need to just get a grip and prick my fingers. One shouldn’t disclose that kind of information so openly, but what I’m trying to do is assume responsibility and make myself accountable for the decisions I make during a life crisis. This isn’t the time to neglect my body, this is the time to actually concentrate on making my body feel good so my mind follows.
This morning I woke up to an email announcing me that there was a ping for one of my blog posts. I surely wasn’t expecting to be Victoria Cumbow‘s announcing Cranky Pancreas was featured in the Best of the ‘Betes Blogs winners for the month of March.
I can’t take credit for it, though. The category is “Best Post by a Type Awesome” and that would be my husband’s work. He’s always willing to share his thoughts, he wrote about living with a person with diabetes, and I’m glad his post got recognized.
Thank you to everyone in the DOC. 
Meet La Bestiole Noire (Little Black Bug). He likes to visit from time to time. He was introduced to me by an old roommate who helped me a lot through my divorce and my new life after that. Every time I got sad and discouraged, she remind me that I had to squish la petite bestiole noire, the bad thoughts in my head, the little voices telling me that I couldn’t do things.
For whatever reason I have a case of la petite bestiole noire today and I’m not liking it a little bit. Instead of looking at my successes during the last months I’m thinking that I won’t be able to accomplish my goals for a healthier, happier life. That’s actually pretty stupid, considering I’m sticking with an exercise routine, I joined Weight Watchers and if I go back and look at my medical records for the last year or so, I’ve lost some weight. Hopefully the new routine will make me lose even more. Looking at other people’s success stories should encourage me rather than make thing I’m not going to make it; and that’s what the bestiole does to me. I have to fight it.
So why is the bestiole here today? I have no idea. It shouldn’t even knock at my door. I’m keeping myself on track, I’m doing awesome, my blood sugars have been within the normal range for a person without diabetes. My legs hurt a lot from exercising, but every day when I get home for work I turn on the XBOX and Zumba my pain away. My husband and I are thinking about buying bicycles so we can start a new healthy hobby.
Yeah, there is no room for the bestiole in my life so I’m going to squish it and I hope you do, too, when he decides to visit.
There’s an excellent post today at Tiny Buddha, about not letting self-defeating attitudes stop us from doing what we want to do. Go and read it!
I asked my husband to write something about diabetes from his perspective. This is what he had to say about living with a person who has type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes sucks, no way around that fact. It is a disease that affects people in a big way no matter what type they have. The hardest thing for me to understand was that a metabolic disease affects a the person in a lot of levels. So my tale begins.I still don’t understand as much about diabetes as I should, but I try to keep myself somewhat informed. The truth of diabetes is that while it affects all facets of your life when you have it, it is not the only culprit. Sure, sometimes a “low” can cause impatience, hunger, thirst, but the person can also be simply hungry, thirsty or in an impatient mood. Living with someone with diabetes makes you learn to keep track of that and also learn how to prevent it.
That is probably the most frustrating part of diabetes with your significant other. The problem is metabolism, but a lot of it comes from how your body reacts to nutrition, especially for people with type 2. It is not only about, “hey, don’t eat sugar.” You would think that the hardest part would be to tell someone, “hey, you should not eat that…” Actually the hard part is to get them to eat when they don’t want to.
A lot of people link obesity with diabetes, especially type 2. The reality is that the frustrating thing of the disease is that even when you do eat healthy, your body might not process the good food as well either. That and that it is all about constant good nutrition, not just good nutrition when the “bad” cop is around.
That is the part I hate about diabetes, being the “bad” cop. Having to tell your loved one that ice cream might not be the right thing to eat when you know they want to eat it. I am in an even worse situation because I don’t care for sugar at all. I can go months or years without ice cream, cookies or cakes. If your significant other is someone that loves those things, it feels horrible because they don’t tell you not to eat bacon even though you have a history of heart disease in your family. It is a constant struggle between being loving, understanding and also supportive.
Then again, I struggle with making sure that my wife eats properly when I am not around. She is not very good about snacking and ends up not eating anything all morning and being really low by lunch time. While the highs are sometimes considered the dangerous ones when dealing with diabetes, the lows also happen quite often.
Besides nutrition the other factor that diabetes affects is energy. You cannot process the fuel, so your energy level is probably lower as well right?
Even though I have been very sedentary for years working in the computer field, I do have energy to do stuff. It can get frustrating when that energy does not match your significant others energy. Everyone loves to talk about exercise, but how about when there is no energy to do that because your body is not processing things to give you that energy in an efficient and constant manner?
Enough about the lows though. Life with a diabetic is no different than life with anyone else. Everyone, as they get older, has aches and pains. Diabetics get to learn to deal with those and adjust a lot earlier in life. It is also awesome when you see that their careful care of their disease yields good A1C numbers… whatever A1C is
You can visit my hubby’s blog and read more of what he has to say about everything. I married a smart one!
Have you ever seen the fingers of a person with diabetes? Mine don’t actually look like that because I manage my condition with medication rather than with insulin and I don’t have to prick my dedos very often. Now the question is, why would I want to prick my fingers more often? I won’t lie to you, one gets used to the lancet, but it hurts (ask my husband). I can’t even begin to imagine what it is like for people who have to check often.
However, I’ve been thinking if it’s right for me to test my blood sugars only 2-3 a week. I think I’d feel more comfortable with once a day, so I can test every day at a different time to actually have a good idea of how my pancreas/liver/cells combo reacts to what I eat, my activity levels, etc. Is that unreasonable? While the medical community agrees that people who don’t use insulin don’t need to test daily, I’m just not sure it helps in the long run.
Sure, we non-insulin peeps don’t have to deal with that many lows, and the A1C may give us a decent idea of how our blood sugars have been, but an average doesn’t really tell you about day to day levels. What if you’re sick? What if you ate something you thought wouldn’t raise your levels, but it actually did? How do you know what is your bad time of the day? If I go by symptoms, that doesn’t help because sometimes I don’t even feel like my levels are high unless I’m super jittery and that’s because the level is really high.
I guess I better talk about this post with my endocrinologist when I go see him next week. I want to have a better understanding of how my body works and I think keeping more records about my blood sugar levels will help.
Last night’s DSMA chat on twitter was about dealing with other chronic conditions related or not to diabetes. At the end of the hour everyone was talking about depression and how difficult it makes to manage any condition that requires us to care about ourselves and keep some kind of discipline. The biggest question was if we thought mental treatment should be required for people who have to live with a chronic disease like diabetes. And this is what I think…
While I don’t think mental help should be required for people who have diabetes (and other chronic conditions), it should be greatly encouraged by health professionals. I understand that not everyone wants to be open about depression because it’s so stigmatized, but in my personal case I thank my endocrinologist for making treating my depression a priority. Let’s go back to November and we can see a big 8.6 A1C result because I was in such a rut I just didn’t have the will to live. Forward to now, after I listened to my doctor and went to seek for help (again… because my depression is recurrent) and my A1C last week was 6.4.
We all need motivation to accomplish things in life. Now add to that the fact that you have to live and deal with an illness every single day… you tend to fall off the wagon quite often (at least I do). Imagine all your motivation just goes down the drain and it’s so much more than just a bad day. Weeks pass and you don’t feel better, your whole body aches, all you want to do is crawl on the floor and you feel like you simply don’t belong. Imagine the impact that kind of episode can have in the management of a condition like diabetes that requires so much discipline?
I for one I’m glad I listen to my doctor. And I’m glad that my psychiatrist told me my antidepressants are just another medication for diabetes. I’m glad that I started doing something for myself because now I have the energy and the motivation to do what I’m supposed to do every single day. And the most important thing is that I have a clear head to understand that I don’t have to be perfect to take care of myself.
So if you’re dealing with depression, please share it with someone who can shed some light so you’re not so lost in the dark. More often than not other people will tell you they’re going through the same thing. If you are capable of being outspoken about depression and chronic diseases, then speak out loud for other people to understand they’re not alone. And if your doctor recommends you to look for help, just do it… you’ll be grateful.
The DSMA Blog Carnival this month is about what can we do to help stop depression from hitting our community during the winter months.
Believe me, it’s not easy battle. Depression can undermine even your most minimal efforts to keep your diabetes in check. You lose motivation, you lose self-esteem, you stop caring. With that comes not checking your blood sugars, not eating well, not taking your medications and consequently you can end up like me, with an A1C of 8.6% — How did I get there? I don’t care. What I care about is the fact that I did what I was advised to do and I’m here waiting for my latest A1C result, which I’m convinced will be much better.
So, what can we do to help?
- Listen. Actually, ask! In my opinion, when you’re in a community where you get to know people well, you can tell when something is out of place. There are keywords that we can learn to identify to realize someone is having a hard time with depression. So yes, don’t be afraid to ask someone if they’re doing OK. Most of the time just having someone who cares is enough to makes us do something about our condition.
- Remind the people in your community of all the good things they do and how much you admire them. I can tell you for a fact that when depression hits, it’s very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it is there. And just a few kind words can help you see it a little bit better.
- Tell people it is OK to ask for help and advise them to do so. I believe in doctors, I believe in psychologists, I believe that sometimes medication can at least help you bounce back so you can take the reins of your life and do what will eventually get you on the right track.
- Don’t dismiss people’s feelings and don’t think that it’s just a matter of forgetting about it and do stuff. Depression means you’re so out of motivation than when someone tells you to just get up and get going feels like a huge slap in the face. Ask how can you help, and react lovingly. Most of the time we know what to do, we just don’t know how to. Offer your advice with compassion.
- Just be there. Support, comfort… that’s what we need. No pity, no validation of negative feelings, just a kind word to remind us there is a way out.
