I see posts like this all the time and it only reinforces the wisdom of my decision to never, ever disclose my D to anyone. In 51 years with D, I’ve never had to deal with this kind of conversation because no one at school, sports, work, or social settings has any idea I’m diabetic. Only my wife, kids and mother know. You really should try it; makes life so much easier. And it’s not the least bit restrictive - I’ve covered fighting in Irag, Afghanistan, Bosnia and other places - and through it all I’m treated like everybody else.
It’s also worth remembering that when you start talking about your “affliction” it’s human nature to go into more detail and depth than most people care to hear. Everybody’s dealing with something, after all, so my choice is to say nothing - ever.
LOL !!!
Kathyann - tell your coworker and your sister that you heard that if you rub coconut oil on a pig pancreas and bury it under the light of the full moon that when you awake, your diabetes will be gone.
Sheesh. Why not? Some people will believe any dang thing.
I’m thinking you’re right, but I’m a natural born blabbermouth.
I’m a Southern lady, after all. We’ll tell total strangers at the grocery store all about our cousin’s sister-in-law’s nightmare hysterectomy – never noticing that they’re backing away from us, clutching their pearls in horror.
This kind of behavior is right in our handbook between the chapter titled I Never Met A Stranger and my favorite: Why Tell the Truth When You Can Tell It Better?
Exactly, Lizmari! Saying “Theirs is Type 2” implies that only you have Type 1, but there are a lot of others who absolutely require insulin. A better statement would be “My diabetes is Type 1, which always requires insulin because my pancreas doesn’t make any.” No comparison of types is needed.
Like you, I knew more about Type 1 than Type 2, because one of my close friends developed it while we were in college.
And you are absolutely right about educating people about all types – in the end, diabetes is diabetes!
My family and close friends all know I have diabetes. They are all very solicitous and careful about taking good care of me.
I had to tell my administrators (I was a high-school teacher) when I worked, because at the time, I was on R and NPH, and needed to have a prep period during 3rd period so I could eat a snack.
I guess I’ve been really lucky, because I have never had a bad experience with other people about my diabetes, except nurses at the hospital and then convalescent center who were following a protocol, and their protocol was not appropriate for me. And the hospitalists didn’t know enough about diabetes to know that it wasn’t working. I’ve written about this before, but if you want to know the story, send me a message.
Shame on them for making you feel like an outcaster! Diabetes does not come and go, and I believe I will have it for the rest of my life, I also have had a few friends say that I should try the supplements, and my response is if they were really that good that the doctor would tell me. In fact the doctor has told me to steer away from them.
I’ve felt like that before during my senior year of high school I was talking to his guy in class and it just came up and I told him I had diabetes and he asked me which type and I said type 1 and he said oh so you were born with it and I said no? I was just diagnosed not that long ago and he pretty much told me if I had type 1 I had to have been born with it he made me soo mad I wanted to cuse him out like umm seriously dude I’m the one suffering with it I think I’d know a little bit more about it than you this kid obviously knew nothing about it and ugh I’m getting frustrated just thinking about it. PEOPLE ARE REALLY IGNORANT when it comes to diabetes type 1 and type 2 and it’s hard not to get mad at them but in all actuality(if that’s a world) if we didn’t have it who knows if we would even know anything about it either because before I got diagnosed I knew pretty much nothing it … BUT I THOUGHT I DID. I guess all you can do is try to educate and if people still don’t believe you well you know the truth so screw em’ 
Good reply, Jamie!! You hit the nail on the head. You can’t expect the public to know about what they haven’t experienced or at least known someone close who had it. It’s like I know very little about multiple sclerosis, although when I’m in the presence of a person who has it, I make sure to ask questions and NOT make flat out statements. Or if I think I might know something, I might ask “Is it true that…” and then they can tell me yes or no.
It’s a skill to respect people’s personal territory, and I’m working on learning that skill, but there are so many people who don’t even think about people’s personal boundaries and emotional needs.
And meanwhile, if they’re uneducable, you’re right – screw 'em!
Smiles,
Natalie ._c-
Um. What ‘poorly educated’ ‘Third World’ nations with lots of ‘hugely obese’ people were you thinking of?
Perhaps India, which is the diabetes capital of the world? More than 50 million diabetics, the vast majority T2. Where the genetic predisposition is so strong that Indians get T2 at much lower body weights than people of Caucasian origin, suffer complications at an earlier stage and suffer them more seriously? Or perhaps Korea which also has lots of T2, most of them normal weight or thin - see Mendosa’s post on this at healthcentral.
Pretty much all of Asia has that problem. I’ve read papers talking about redefining the definitions of overweight and obesity for Asians, because they do develop diabetes and other health problems at much lower weights than Caucasians. (They’re Chihuahuas and we’re St. Bernards???)
There is also a lot of problems among Native Americans, both North and South. Since they originally descended from Asians who crossed the Bering Strait (a VERY long time ago!), that may not be surprising.
This just goes to show that the world-wide increase in Type 2 diabetes was NOT caused by the U.S. Food Industry – there is something else going on.
Well you have to wonder at the constant peddling of this myth of a ‘westernized’ diet being responsible for all sorts of ills. Most Indians still eat a traditional diet and lots and lots of them are vegetarians; however that traditional diet is extremely high in carbohydrates.
I was reading this Bloomberg article about diabetes in India and while it wasn’t utterly ignorant as so many mainstream media articles about diabetes are, it was implying that more comfortable lifestyles were to blame for the epidemic. But what was this more comfortable lifestyle? Having more than one meal a day, having sanitation, an indoor toilet, and not having to walk 20 miles to the nearest clean water source.
Basically you’re screwed if your ancestors had to fight to survive famine and starvation because any improvement from famine conditions will be a sufficient trigger!
“Go off insulin”? Why not try to “go off” neurotransmitters, or oxygen, or H20, and see how well that works. It’s sad that people think insulin is a medication when it’s a hormone, one that our bodies produce so we don’t die. I wish to heaven we had better science education in this country!
couldn’t have said it better myself Kari!
If you go back far enough, everyone’s ancestors had to fight to survive. I read some genetic history book that mentioned the diabetes gene that had some theories about that, I wish I had filed it more solidly in my head so I could access it. I think they had a theory situating it somewhere in the “Dawn of Civilization” era which I found sort of creepy.
This is an example of a gene (or genes) that were once beneficial, and have become deleterious. The sickle-cell anemia gene in Africans once protected them against malaria if they were heterozygous (had just one copy) for it; many of those that didn’t have it at all died of malaria, and those that were homozygous (had 2 copies) died a painful death from sickle-cell anemia, leaving the gene very common in the heterozygous survivors of that population.
However, American blacks are not subject to malaria (thank goodness!), but they still carry the gene, and it causes a lot of suffering for people who inherit 2 copies of it. Because we aren’t proponents of “wild nature”, we seek to relieve their suffering, and maybe some day there will be a cure.
Same thing with Type 2 diabetes. It may once have been beneficial for the prevention of starvation, but if it requires eating at almost starvation level and walking 20 miles a day, a “natural” cure isn’t going to happen. What was once a survival trait has become a disease in the modern world. Again, the goal is to find out what the dysfunctions are and find a way to relieve or better yet, cure them. Just ain’t gonna happen any time soon, and the media and some “virtuous”(read: genetically) skinny people are very happy to just blame the victim rather than trying to understand what the genetic issues really are.
My theory on Dawn Phenomon is that it was advantageous to have a “boost” in the morning when you had to roll out of your cave and find nuts, berries, grubs and bugs to get fueled up to go chase the freaking wooly mammoth you hoped to eat for dinner? It is certainly a PITA when we have grown accustomed to hunting Cheerios in the cupboard…
i tell them it IS natural, not a medication. their body makes insulin, mine doesn’t. all i am doing is replacing what i’ve lost. if they keep it up after that and aren’t open to discussion i tell them, bluntly, that without i die and to please shut up. only one of them has persisted after that and she was type 2 diabetic and just didn’t get it.
LMAO! awesome, jean- I love it! I do the same thing even though I’m a yankee-jersey-girl! It’s probably not as charming as the way southern ladies do it up! LOL
Somewhat unrelated, but my sister is one of those genetically scrawny types… even in her 30’s she eats what she wants, and doesn’t gain an ounce… she is a size 2 without trying (which frustrates her - she says she has a hard time finding clothes that fit). I’ve never been super skinny… and I am just as active as she is, and I probably eat better (she doesn’t cook, so unless she’s having cereal or toast she eats out all th etime), but she’s quick to blame me for my weight, almost implying that I am doing something wrong… I am not, we’re just different. I don’t feel like I have any more control over my weight than she does.
From the age of 8-9 it was clear we had different body types… I have wider hips, broader shoulders, and that’s not an excuse for being fat - I was never overweight as a child, but I had a much different build than her, and in comparison, I looked chunky (I wasn’t) while she looked lean. There was as time as teenagers where we were the same weight, I was 2" taller, yet I wore clothes 2 sizes bigger than her, and if you looked at us both, you would have probably guessed I was 10-15lbs heavier, but I wasn’t. At 20 I developed T1, and my weight has fluctuated a LOT over the past 10 years, and I’m currently at the higher end of that fluctuation (I blame my thyroid plus three tightly controlled pregnancies that piled on a lot of weight), but even at my thinnest, before I was diagnosed with hashimoto’s and my thyroid was going crazy and I lost more than 40lbs without trying, I was clinically underweight and told to gain at least 10lbs, and I was still a bigger size than she is… I think genetics just dealt me a crappy hand.