Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Diabetes: Life-Changing diagnosis?

Sorry I haven't been posting as much lately.  I've got my 3-month checkup coming up in a couple of weeks, and an optometrist appointment in the same approximate time frame.  Well, I haven't made them yet, but I will this week.

I did have lunch this week, a friend from work who works for another company.  He heard through channels about my diagnosis, and when I talked to him on the phone a couple months ago, he called the diagnosis "life-changing".

In many ways, it is life-changing.  I wish I could count all the donuts, cookies, candies etc. that I've turned down.  Not because I have to, but because I wasn't inclined to bolus right then. :)  I had butter pecan ice cream at lunch today - Yarnell's - so I'm not being held down by the diabetes police, or whatever. :)

But I try very hard not to think about it that way. I think that puts too much emphasis on the hardship of the disease, and I'd rather not do that. It's true, the disease comes with its hardships. There are days I feel like a human pincushion. I deliberately pushed a needle into my own body 9 separate times today, and today was fairly typical. Most of the time it doesn't hurt much, sometimes it doesn't hurt at all, but I still flinch a little when I do my fingersticks and every once in a while I hit a blood vessel when I bolus. That hurts, and leaves a nasty-looking bruise.

But I don't want to focus on those things. I like focusing on the difference between my condition now and my condition in, say, August when I was too tired to do much of anything. I like to think about how I'm under fairly good control now, and in good shape to avoid all the complications of this disease.

Has the diagnosis changed my life? Sure it has. But it hasn't all been bad. I'm eating better (and eating a lot less). I'm enjoying a lot of the things I eat a lot more, since a lot of the stuff I used to eat was carb-loaded, and those have a lot more meaning to me now.

It would be nice if I could just grab a handful of M&M's and munch on them like my pancreas worked right, but that would be silly. It's a bolus now or later kind of thing.

People still occasionally hear about the diabetic routine and say, "I don't think I could do that." I've seen some more people on TV who do not take care of their diabetes like they should. (The current Biggest Loser field has two admitted Type 2's, one of whom was eliminated last night.) I know people who haven't taken care if it. Most of those outcomes are not ideal for the patients in question.

I'm going to take care of mine. I prefer not to think of it as life-changing, because there's a lot more to my life than that. I prefer to think of the things that haven't changed, and hopefully won't, because I'm taking care of it.

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