A thought occurred to me the other day: While diabetes doesn’t define who I am, it has unquestionably majorly impacted my life. I started thinking about and writing down how it has done so.
Wonder whether or not I’ll have trouble affording my medications in the future (not just my necessary diabetes prescriptions)
Believe that there are just some things in life I can’t do because of it
What sticks out to me about that list is that all of it is negative. So I tried thinking about all of the positive ways that diabetes has affected me, and I’m happy to say that I came up with a longer, happier list:
My diabetes has also made me…
Knowledgeable about nutrition
Unafraid of needles
Understand my own body better
Meet and connect with people I might not have otherwise
Comfortable with speaking in front of large groups about it
Become more philanthropic by volunteering my time and energy for certain groups
Self-sufficient (well, slightly self-sufficient)
Pack smartly when traveling
Prepared at practically all times for any diabetes-related scenario
Motivated to exercise on a daily basis to achieve better blood sugars
Mentally and physically stronger
Guess what else diabetes made me do? …It made me take this photo!!!
Diabetes makes me think about and do so many things that I would never dream of if I didn’t have it. A lot of those things are a pain in the neck and I truly wish I could have a break from them, but more of those things have shaped me into a well-rounded individual.
The good outweighs the bad, and diabetes has made me glad to have that perspective.
Six years and one day ago, my maternal grandfather passed away. He was 87 years old and lived a very full life, but his passing felt sudden to all of his family members who simply believed that we had more time with him.
In the immediate days following his death, my parents, brother, aunts, uncles, and cousins experienced a wide array of emotions, as well as physical side effects from overwhelming grief. I had some of the highest blood sugars of my life during this time, and I also came down with some sort of fever that left me boiling hot one minute and head-to-toe shivering the next.
I remember that getting myself ready for his wake was a real process – I was collapsed on the floor just outside of the bathroom, waving a hair dryer not just on my head, but also all over my body because I felt so frigidly cold. Little did I know, my blood sugar was also well over 400, but even if I’d known that fact sooner, I probably wouldn’t have cared very much.
A photo from my Grandpa’s last birthday with us.
Anyways, the intent of this post isn’t to remember a truly heart-wrenching period of my life. It’s to help me remember my grandpa, and catch him up on everything that’s happened since he left us. I thought it’d be most appropriate to do this in the form of a letter.
Dear Grandpa,
I have so much to tell you. But let me start with an apology. I’m sorry that I didn’t appreciate you more when I was younger. I’m sorry that I didn’t try harder to talk to you and hear your many stories firsthand. I always respected you throughout my youth and teenage years, as my parents instilled upon me early on to respect my elders. And even in childhood, I knew you were the elder to respect; after all, I was convinced that you single-handedly ended WWII. What’s more respectful than that? Anyways, I digress – the point is that I wish I made more of an effort to learn more from you and I’m sorry that I’ll never get a chance to make up for that.
You probably already know most of what I’m going to tell you. We lost Zuzu the same year we lost you, and I’m sure she’s with you in heaven now, but then we gained Clarence a couple of years ago and I think you would get such a kick out of him. There’s been a few more losses in our family, too, but many more gains of all kinds, and I know that in a way, you were there with us for those occasions and everything in between.
You also probably already know that since we lost you, I graduated college and started my career. Weird, right? I also started a blog about diabetes, and really, it’s become a much bigger part of my life than it ever was before. I would love to see your eyes widen in awe at our diabetes technology and how advanced it has become over the years. (I remember how amazed you used to be when we showed you our computers and early-model eBook tablets, I can only imagine your reaction to medical technology!)
As I sit here and type this and marvel at how much (and how little) has changed since you left, I remain grateful for the fact that you were a big part of our childhoods (“our” meaning my brother’s and my cousins’ childhoods, as well as mine). I also take comfort in the fact that just because you’re not physically here to witness all of this stuff, you’re here in our hearts and you’re with us in that manner for every step in our journeys. I know that when I’m having a tough diabetes day, you’re one of the guardian angels looking out for me and helping me recover from it.
And I also know that you’d be proud of me for what I’ve accomplished so far in life, and for me, that’s more than enough motivation to keep going, fighting, and working hard to beat diabetes and be successful in other arenas, too.
I’m broaching a subject I’ve never openly discussed in an online forum in today’s blog post…and that is diabetes complications.
The reason why I’ve never talked about complications is straightforward: They absolutely terrify me.
It’s a topic that’s so foreign and frightening to me that I don’t even know the full extent of diabetes complications. You can Google them, for sure, and discover a long list of scary conditions involving the heart, eyes, extremities, and other internal organs. But I’d rather not do that to myself, let alone the audience of this blog.
I don’t want you to think that I’m naive, though…I know that not talking about something doesn’t mean that it’ll just go away or never happen.
Recently, I became glaringly aware of this fact through the form of (what I presume to be) my own diabetes complication: tendonitis in my left hand.
In the last year or two, I’ve felt sporadic sensitivity in my left hand when I fully extend my wrist, bear any weight on it, or even when I do simple wrist rotations. I never really knew when to expect the pain, but it happened every few months and lasted about a week each time. So when I felt it again around the time I was due for my annual physical with my PCP, I decided to ask him about it.
He explained to me that, based on the type of pain and its duration, it wasn’t carpal tunnel (numbness and tingling are symptoms of that, not pain) like I thought it might be. It also wasn’t arthritis (I didn’t have swelling or reduced range of motion) or neuropathy (I wasn’t experiencing pins and needles), but he did say that those aren’t uncommon in people with diabetes. That’s when he located the exact inflamed tendon – the thick, fibrous cord that attaches muscle to bone – in my left hand/wrist that was giving me trouble.
Me with my new (but occasional) accessory.
Just like all the aforementioned conditions, my tendonitis is probably due to my diabetes. Although my PCP didn’t explicitly state that I definitely have it because I’ve had diabetes for 22 years, he did identify a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. But, fortunately, he also reassured me that my occasional flares of tendonitis are nothing to worry about. As long as I continue to do what I’m doing (which is supporting my hand and wrist with a brace when I experience bouts of pain, as well as rest the area as much as possible during those times), then I’ll be totally fine.
While I’m not exactly thrilled to have to deal with tendonitis, I am very relieved that I know there’s an explanation to help make sense of it all, and that I’ve been doing the right things to handle it. So even though I won’t be going out of my way to research any other diabetes complications any time soon (why on earth would I want to stress myself out unnecessarily), I have come to terms with my tendonitis as a possible complication for me. And rather than seeing it as a completely negative thing, I’ve decided to just keep doing what I’m doing, and continue to take the best possible care I can of myself and my diabetes.
They say prevention is the best medicine for a reason, right?
I like lists. I like them so much because I like to pretend to be an organized person who always has tasks to complete (the former is definitely false, while the latter is pretty much absolutely true). I also like lists because making one feels like an accomplishment in itself, and who doesn’t like feeling accomplished?
What can I say, I’m a list girl. (But not a hand model; that’s definitely not my perfectly manicured hand in the above photo.)
So I must admit that I felt pretty damn good about myself after making these two diabetes-related lists, because not only do they pull weight as blog post material, but they also help me understand something about me and my diabetes. So here they are:
List of things I should do on a daily basis for my diabetes:
Check my blood sugar using my meter 6-8 times per day (upon waking up, before I go to sleep, before I eat a meal, and in-between meals to make sure I’m on track)
Change my lancet (LOL)
Look up carb counts for every meal using apps and/or nutritional facts
Monitor my Dexcom carefully and do fingerstick checks when I disagree with it
Take a correction bolus for every blood sugar that’s over 150 mg/dL
Eat plenty of fruits and veggies AND drink plenty of water
List of things that I actually do on a daily basis for my diabetes:
Check my blood sugar whenever the heck I feel like it; after all, my Dexcom is usually accurate
Change my lancet only when I remember, which is like…once or twice a month
Eyeball my plates of food and make “educated guesses” on carb counts
Monitor my Dexcom OBSESSIVELY – sometimes even every 5 minutes, depending on the situation – and freak out when it doesn’t match my fingerstick checks
Take a correction bolus for blood sugars that are 200+ only
Eat what I’d like (which, in addition to fruits and veggies, is a wide variety of things) and drink probably not quite enough fluids
When I compare these two lists, I come to the same conclusion: I am lazily in control of my diabetes. I know exactly what my current routines are and just because they aren’t the “right” ones, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m doing anything “wrong” in terms of my diabetes care and management. Sure, I’m not doing anything the textbook way, and I admit that I’ve gotten a little lazy with things like carb counting and correction bolusing, but so what? The important thing here is that I can recognize the areas where I need and want to improve.
For starters, I’d like to stop depending so much on my Dexcom. I want to learn to check it less – maybe take it out half as often as I do now – so I can strengthen my ability to recognize low and high symptoms. I’m also hoping to use measuring cups and nutritional information more often to make better informed decisions when it comes to how much insulin I give myself at mealtimes. It’ll add a few extra steps to my day, but these are habits that I followed for a long time and that are worth reintroducing to my routine.
As far as everything else goes, I’m not going to sweat them too much…of course, it will be nice if I remember to change my lancet more frequently and be more proactive about correcting high blood sugars, but really, these are matters of minor concern. I think I make my best diabetes progress when I take things one step at a time, so that’s just what I’m going to do.
I started out 2020 with an A1c that surprised me. It was a good surprise: Anything under 7 is a win in my book.
I won’t specifically say what the number was, because I don’t really believe in doing that and I fear that it will invite unwelcome judgment and/or comparisons. But I will celebrate that achieving this A1c was far from easy. It’s required a lot of work from me in the last few months, which have generally been a very turbulent period of time for me.
It seemed like the “diabetes gods” were really testing me in the latter half of 2019. From a month of unexplained highs to random incidents of technology failing me, I felt like I was being put through the wringer. I felt like a failure on just about all diabetes fronts, and it seemed like my efforts to maintain my desired blood sugar levels were fruitless.
More than one surprise came with an unexpected A1c result.
So that’s why I could hardly believe my current A1c reading. Maybe it seems even more impossible to me because I didn’t even get to discuss it with an endocrinologist. In fact, I never got to talk to my new endo (the one I may or may not continue to see) about any of my A1c goals. Doesn’t that seem kind of effed up? Shouldn’t my doctor want to know what I hope to accomplish, in terms of my diabetes, in the next 3-6 months?
In that regard, this A1c has surprised me in more than one way…it’s not just that I’ve managed to get here (really, I’ve managed to stay here, my A1c in the last 2-3 years has been right around this number), it’s also about how it’s more than just a measurement of my average blood sugars in a 90-day period…it’s a marker of how I feel, emotions-wise, about my diabetes. I never thought about it much before, but as I’ve grown older, it’s really become a sign for me as to whether or not I have my shit together with my diabetes. It can signify how I’ve felt about my diabetes in a given period of time, from the lowest of the low burnouts to the highest of the high determined and motivated.
Kind of crazy and yes, surprising, how a single reading can mean this much.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve (already) and it just so happens that it’s also my diabetes diagnosis anniversary…or “diaversary,” as it’s colloquially known.
This means that tomorrow marks 22 years of living with diabetes.
For some, that might mean I should celebrate with a cupcake or another special, carb-y treat. And I probably will, because it’s Christmas Eve and sweets are sure to be bountiful at any gatherings I attend tomorrow. But I don’t really plan to do so with my diaversary in mind; for me, it’s the holiday that’s got me in a more festive mood than the fact that my diabetes is 22.
I don’t really know how to feel about this diaversary. My feelings last year about my 21st were very clear: I was down in the dumps about it. I was desperate for a break. And I really didn’t say much more beyond that.
If you were me, would you do anything special to celebrate 22 years of diabetes?
This year is a little different. I feel the same as last year in that I would do anything for just a single day off from diabetes, but also…I guess I’ve just learned to embrace the routine of it?
I dunno. My relationship with diabetes is always going to be a bit of a roller coaster, just as my blood sugar can sometimes be. I’ll have my highs and my lows, and in between all that…is how I feel now. It exists. It’s just…there. It’s been part of me for 22 years and it will continue to be a part of me as we head into this next decade. (Where’s that cure they’ve been promising us…oh, it’s another 5 years from now, right?)
So my diabetes is 22 and I’m feeling “meh” about it. And that’s perfectly okay. I won’t deny my feelings (or lack thereof). I’ll simply just continue to live my life with diabetes, learning from both the literal and figurative highs and lows as I go along.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, dear readers. Be well, hug your loved ones, and enjoy the spirit of the season.
On second thought, that may be an understatement. I’m the type of person who always NEEDS TO HAVE a plan.
I always need to know the date, time, location, and what to expect during my length of stay when it comes to anything in life: a night out with friends, a quick trip to the grocery store, a vacation.
I always need to know what the plan is for dinner…and breakfast, and lunch, and snacks…every single day.
I always need to know what my options are should a plan not go according to my carefully thought out course of action; in other words, I take a great deal of comfort in having a Plan B…and a Plan C, Plan D…
The bottom line is, I think that my obsession with planning has a lot to do with how my diabetes has turned me into an absolute control freak over the years.
My diabetes is the reason why, for much of my life, I’ve felt like I needed to plan out everything that I do.
Let me explain: Try as I might, I will never have complete control over my diabetes. This has been a difficult reality for me to accept, but it’s the truth, and I know that nobody can ever truly control diabetes. It has a mind of its own sometimes, and the best that we can do is react accordingly to the curve balls it throws.
Since I won’t ever have control over this major, major thing in my life, I think this has triggered me to feel compelled to control everything else in my life…even things beyond my control. And yes, it’s as maddening as it sounds.
It affects myself and everyone close to me.
It is the reason why I worry so much and waste a lot of brain space on things that I shouldn’t.
And it’s something that, though I’ve come to terms with it, I would like to change because the rational part of me knows that it’s not healthy to maintain the unrealistic expectation that I can control everything that happens in my life. If I can accept things like random pod failures and unexplained high blood sugars, then shouldn’t I also be able to accept that other random things can just happen in life, such as a pipe bursting in my apartment or the car I’m driving getting a sudden flat tire?
The more rigid version of myself that existed a year ago would’ve absolutely panicked and melted down in the face of those scenarios, but the type of person I’m trying to be now actually recently handled both of those unpredictable events with a lot more coolness and calmness than I ever could have imagined.
So I guess what I’m getting at here, in a very long-winded way, is that my diabetes may have turned me into an obsessive planner control freak…but I’m just beginning to discover my ability to let go a little more and not let my diabetes affect my thinking and reactions to many other things that happen in life.
November ended a couple short weeks ago: just enough time to allow me to reflect on how I feel about National Diabetes Awareness Month (NDAM) 2019. My experience can be summed up with the following three sentiments:
It was exhausting. It might not seem like it takes a lot of effort to post daily on Instagram, but for me, this was a major commitment! It was pretty tough to come up with an engaging post for every single prompt of the Happy Diabetic Challenge. I wanted each of my posts to not only generate interest in learning more about diabetes, but I also hoped that others would notice the thoughtfully written captions and, more importantly, blog posts that went with a handful of them. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I was proud of myself for keeping at it. But man, I still feel like I need a bit of a social media cleanse after all that posting, liking, and commenting.
It was educational. This may have been one of the most enlightening Novembers I’ve ever experienced, diabetes-wise. I feel like I heard and listened to many diverse voices in the diabetes community – and not just the T1D ones. In particular, I found myself paying closer attention to T2D perspectives, especially on Twitter. By doing that, I realized that I need to make it a point to be more inclusive when describing diabetes, in general, to others. In the past, I think I’ve made the mistake of talking about certain experiences about life with diabetes in a way that sounds exclusive to type 1, and that simply isn’t always the case. So it’s my new mission to make sure I represent other types of diabetes as best as I can on social media and in person, going forward, so that I can do my part to end diabetes stigma about all forms of it.
National Diabetes Awareness Month 2019 was a jam-packed 30-day period…to say the least.
It was empowering. Although NDAM 2019 kind of kicked my butt in terms of showing me how much I have to learn and triggering a social media burnout, it still doesn’t mitigate the fact that our amazing diabetes online community really comes together during this period of heightened awareness and advocacy. There’s something special about all of our interactions during diabetes awareness month: Whether they’re comments about how one person can relate to another, or a story about how someone changed someone else’s perspective, there’s power in these exchanges. Plus, it’s pretty neat to see how sharing the most mundane aspects of life with diabetes can result in positive change and growth.
Now that I’ve reflected on it, I’m ready to put the insanity of NDAM 2019 behind me…and feeling thankful that I have another 11 months to prepare for NDAM 2020 to make it an even better experience for myself and others.
Well, well, well…looks like I’ve got another Metformin update for you all.
You’ve probably lost track of where I am in this long, twisting journey with the pill. (If you need a refresher, all you need to do is click here, here, here, here, and here.)
All caught up? Great. Now you really understand how complex my relationship with Metformin is.
There were times that I loved it. There were times that I hated it. And there were times when I simply couldn’t be sure if it was working for me the way that I’d hoped and needed it to.
I thought Metformin was right for me, but it turns out it definitely is not.
This last go-round represented the latter thought: Metformin simply wasn’t cutting it for me.
I’d been taking one pill daily for about a month when I decided to quit. The reason why I stopped taking it is simple: I wasn’t noticing a dramatic reduction in how much insulin I take each day. It was maybe a one or two unit drop, and that just doesn’t justify me taking a pill like this on a daily basis.
Now, you might be wondering why I didn’t amp up my dose. After all, it says right on the bottle that I can take up to four pills daily. Well, I chose not to take more for a few reasons: 1) I’m in between endocrinologists right now, and don’t really have anyone to consult regarding dosage, 2) At one point in time, I thought I noticed side effects of taking Metformin, and I’ve convinced myself that any possible side effects would intensify with a higher dose, 3) I wasn’t sure whether the higher blood sugars I was dealing with in the fall were due to stress or permanent changes that my body was experiencing.
So yeah, as you can see, it’s not a cut-and-dry answer when it comes to me increasing my Metformin dose.
I feel like I’m in a better place now with my blood sugars and daily insulin intake. Certainly, things have improved compared to how they were in September and much of October. Rather than fret over taking “too much” insulin every day, I’m going to focus on things that I have greater ability to control, such as the foods I choose to eat (that may or may not impact how much insulin I need) and the levels of exercise I get each week. I feel like that’s a healthier, better way to take care of myself.
So…farewell, Metformin. I won’t miss you. I know you do great things for other people with diabetes, but I’m not sure that you and I are a good match.
It’s November 29th which means it’s day 29 of the Happy Diabetic Challenge! Today’s prompt is about diabetes goals. I decided to use this as an opportunity to share and set my diabetes goals as National Diabetes Awareness Month draws to a close…
Goal-setting sounds like an ambitious activity. It implies that goals will be met, and we all know that sometimes that just doesn’t happen.
Why? Occasionally, we set goals that are simply unattainable. As an example, let’s pretend that you have a goal to lose weight. Well, if you tell yourself that you can shed 20 pounds by next week, then you’re setting yourself up for failure – ‘cuz it’s unhealthy to lose that weight so quickly, not to mention practically impossible.
But setting a goal to lose those 20 pounds over the course of, let’s say, two months…that’s FAR more realistic. You give yourself a workable time frame in which you can accomplish the goal and you can take small steps each day to work towards it, rather than doing anything extreme or overly difficult in order to meet the goal.
It’s always very satisfying when you can say that you’ve met a goal you’ve set.
That’s why they say it’s important to set SMART goals. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Goals that are set with this criteria in mind are far more likely to become a reality, so with that in mind…I’m going to share and set a few diabetes goals for myself, right now, that I hope to accomplish in the coming months (think of it as an early diabetes-themed list of New Years’ resolutions.)
Goal #1 – I’d like to go back to checking my blood sugar with my actual meter at least 4 times per day. I’ve come to rely on my not-always-totally-reliable Dexcom a little too much. And since I have a well-stocked stash of test strips, I figure that it makes sense to use them before and after each meal, as well as when I’m not sure about my Dexcom’s readings.
Goal #2 – Change my lancet weekly, instead of monthly…ish. This is the other underused diabetes supply in my possession. As long as I decide on a particular day and time to do this quick little task, then I think it’ll be easy to follow through week after week.
Goal #3 – Stop snacking on “free” foods. I need to get it through my semi-thick skull that there’s no such thing as free foods when it comes to diabetes! I used to be able to eat a short stack of crackers, a handful of popcorn, or a bite-size piece of chocolate at any hour of the day and notice a very minimal bump in my blood sugar levels. This sure isn’t the case these days, and I want to set myself up for success by making sure that when snack cravings strike, I have plenty of water or gum on hand to help distract from faux-hunger pangs.
These goals may seem very minor to you, but for me, they’re all examples of some things that I truly think I need to address when it comes to my diabetes care and management. And the fact that they are “easy” makes them that much more attainable: It won’t take much for me to incorporate them into my routine, but over time, I’m bound to notice a difference (especially when it comes to that last goal).
Also, I think it’s wise to avoid setting overly ambitious goal – at least for the time being – because I’m not seeing an endocrinologist again for another month. When I do have that appointment, I’ll have a much clearer picture of what my diabetes goals should be as we approach 2020, and I can go about formulating a plan as to how to pursue them.
And on that note, this blog post wraps up the Happy Diabetic Challenge posts on my blog for National Diabetes Awareness Month 2019. I hope you enjoyed them, learned from them, or at least got to thinking more about your own diabetes as a result of reading them. I’m proud of myself for sticking with the challenge for the month, but boy, was it an exhausting 30 days of nonstop diabetes advocacy! I’m looking forward to December: It’ll be a nice change of pace to slow down and appreciate time spent with loved ones throughout the holiday season. I’ll still be blogging regularly throughout the month, just a little less intensely.
Hoping you had a wonderful Thanksgiving no matter how you chose to spend it, and wishing you continued success with your diabetes as the holiday season gets into full swing.
Hugging the Cactus 