I think I truly realised today my severe anxiety is caused by a total lack of control over my own body due to diabetes. I am at it’s mercy - it calls the shots ( pardon the pun) The constant relentless time given to testing, injections, hypos, hypers, food, cgm , appts and even after doing ‘everything right’ I still have no control. The only thing predictable about this disease is it’s unpredictability . My family tells me to live in the moment and not think into the future but how can you not with this disease. Everything you do and every decision you make is based on how diabetes will be affected. Anyway just my thoughts.
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Strangely, you can see diabetes in exactly the reverse way, as a constant theme in your life that gives you determinate goals and a set structure. Most people find themselves in an open sea of existential dilemmas, looking for some way to establish meaning in their lives, but if you are a diabetic at least one thing, medical self-management, is given to you as an orientation point. I occasionally wonder whether, if diabetes were cured, some of us might in some strange way miss the automatic structuring of the day provided by the disease. None of this is to say diabetes is good, but still, it does lend a kind of meaning to life, in the way a medieval romance would invent a dragon to give the knight some quest by which he could define his role.
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I don’t think you need to take this posture for reasonable mental health. At the other extreme, no one can manage diabetes 100% well every moment of every day. In the middle, I think it’s possible to do better, much better than you might imagine.
It all starts with acquiring the knowledge needed to make informed diabetes treatment decisions. I’ll use one under-appreciated potent tactic that too many over-look. That is preboulsing for every meal to the extent you can. Current clinical advice is often to use a standard time period, often 15 minutes, to use for the amount of time to let lapse between insulin dosing and eating your first bite.
I suggest, instead, to find the pre-bolus time that works best for you. This involves some personal experimenting monitoring your blood sugar at the time of your meal dose and after. Ideally, you want to start eating when your blood glucose starts to take a definite downward trend. This works best with a continuous glucose monitor but fingersticking can also illuminate this effect.
I discovered that my morning meal dose must be delivered at least 30 minutes in advance. Your diabetes, of course, may vary. I find this technique potent for matching the food curve to the insulin curve and can often eat with a post meal BG curve under 120 mg/dL (6.7).
Diabetes can dominate your attention and life or you might choose to employ an expansive list of techniques that tilt the game in your favor and give you more time to live the rest of your life. Good luck!
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I’ve had type I for 48 yrs this month. Of course, we did not have the tools we have now back then, but I was still a can do person. I went 600 miles away from home to college, using urine testing as my only real tool. I did just fine. I had more a tough time convincing a ballet dept that I could do something, than worrying about what I couldn’t do. You dont have to make diabetes fit your future, your future is the same with or without as far as your life goes. Take time for it, make it fit (I mean you may not want to fly a hot air balloon around the world or something) but press on with a can do attitude. As with any move you make, it’s going to be there but it doesnt define you. Blessings!
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Unfortunately that is the reality we live with and will forever unless there are better treatments, a cure of sorts, a transplant and so on. It is exhausting and there is no break.
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Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement 
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