I saw a post on Instagram recently that infuriated me (I hope you can get a sense of the vitriol I’m about to spew out).
An Instagram user (who shall remain nameless because it’s not cool to put people on blast) was exploring the reasons why they thought they developed diabetes in a series of Insta stories. Several questions were asked:
Was it because of an sedentary lifestyle?
Did it have something to do with being breastfed versus bottle-fed?
Does it have to do with diet?
Was it because of exposure to a certain set of germs?
Did it have something to do with a family history of diabetes?
And the list goes on…and on.
Why did it make me angry?
It’s because, well, personally, I don’t care WHY I have diabetes. I don’t think that exploring the reason(s) why I have it is a healthy way to spend my time.
All I know is that my pancreas doesn’t produce insulin – rather than trying to narrow down the reason why that is, I’d much rather put that energy into taking the best possible care of my diabetes.
Am I crazy? Doesn’t that make sense? It’s just that wondering about the why won’t do a damn thing to change the fact that I have diabetes.
I don’t want to make anyone feel badly if they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the “why” – I’m sure that when I was younger, I asked myself that question a lot – but I’m merely just trying to change the direction and the focus of the conversation.
Let’s not talk about why – let’s talk about how.
How we can live incredible, full lives with diabetes.
How fortunate we are to have access to tools and technology that help us manage it.
How, despite diabetes sucking a lot of the time, it’s actually brought about a lot of positive change and influence in many peoples’ lives.
Now that’s the kind of productive discussions I’d like to see on social media…not the ones that are all doom, gloom, and pure speculation.
Hugging the Cactus 
I did and still do hear from “experts” on why I have diabetes. Some of them may have been possible but most just make me chuckle. Exercise? I rode my bike all over he city (not huge but good sized). Eating too much sugar? Possible but not likely. You are so right that it is the wrong conversation to have. Talk about how you dal with it daily in today’s world, not how you may have gotten it decades ago. Most people never stop to separate type 1s and type 2s. Genetics vs. lifestyle. Had a coworker one day tell me that I had not eaten right as a kid and that is why I got diabetes. If I started eating right now, I could possibly get off insulin all together. I just chuckled and explained how a defect in my immune system let it kill off the cells that make the insulin. Changing my diet will not change my genetic coding. He did not know that. People read all these articles that state that diet and lack of exercise are the causes of diabetes and think it is a one size fits all issue. It is not. Just like how we all treat it. You’re on a pump and it works pretty well for you. My 2 experiences with them have left me less than happy with the results. It’s why I asked to go back on shots and not just that but off the 24 long acting and back to 1980s intermediate acting 12 hour insulin. I t allows me to treat days and nights with different doses. It work for me, even using Walmart cheapo insulin. The first A1c was 12 after switching but now that we have a better handle on the changes needed it is back to 8.2 which is less than the 8.8 it was at while on the pumps.
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