Someone on another site today admitted he lies to his doctors. He says they are very judgemental when he admits he is not doing the right things to have good control. They even treat him like he doesn’t care about getting that control. He has a new doctor now who is kind and understanding and does not downgrade him but he is still telling a few lies. He is ashamed of admitting his bad habits.
I have lied to some doctors in the past but that was a long time ago. Now I have a doctor (for 31 years now) who understands me so well and I do NOT lie to him. We have built a great trust and friendship. If I do something completely different and it is working he makes a note and approves. It might be unpleasant the first time we lie to a doctor but if he/she is a good doctor and not judgemental then we owe it to ourselves to be completely honest so we can build that relationship of mutual trust. That is the kind of doctor-patient relationship that we all need. It is up to us to plant the seed and watch a great relationship grow!!
OK, I will climb down from my soap box and hush now. If any of you are guilty of lying to your doctor(s) please think about this and do the right thing for the sake of your good health.
I did this in college because my doctor guilt-tripped me so badly. I never liked to admit getting a single reading over 200mg/dl, and would purposely avoid checking my BS when I knew I was high because of this (he would plug my meter into his computer at my appointments).
I realized how bad this was for me. I started skipping my endo appointments for as long as I could until I needed new prescriptions.
Eventually I switched endos, to one who is understanding and doesn’t berate me for not being perfect, and I don’t lie anymore.
I have lied to them in the past, and all that it got me was an a1c that was higher than should have been expected. I have learned that I have never told a lie that didn’t come back to bite my in the a$$, so I try not to anymore, though it is hard to be 100% perfect. I don’t lie to my endo anymore. The results are too obvious from the downloaded pump and meter information. It is not worth even trying.
i don’t lie about the big stuff, the reason we go to the doctor is to help keep my son’s a1c at an acceptable level.
HOWEVER - i do lie about the size of the cannula we use on his animas inset II infusion sets. we use the 6 mm, even though they have told us it’s not recommended because they are too short and could fall out. we’ve never had one fall out and he complains the 9 mm are painful. he is six and has NO body fat. the 6 mm works for us. if they ask i just say it’s a 9 mm.
I won’t lie, but I may decline to volunteer information, particularly if it is just going to end up with a distracting conflict. But I feel like I have a duty to be honest with my doctor or I will compromise his ability to take care of me.
I’ve been called lots of things by doctors. I have been told I’m fat and stupid. I’ve been told to lay off the sugar. The doctors feelings just don’t matter to me. I’ve had so many doctors not really care how I felt or was doing, I’m just beyond that.
But I am with Richard on this one. I feel an obligation to be honest with the doctor. If I have fallen off the wagon and don’t give a cr*p about things, he needs to know that. If I refused to take the medication he gave me, he needs to know that. I am the ultimate arbiter of my health decisions, even if they confict with what the doctor wants. I may decide to do something against my doctors recommendations, but it is wrong to not tell them and mislead them. If I mislead him in putting together my health decisions and planning, the only one I will harm is myself. The doctor will still get paid just as much, independent of how much I lied to him.
Part of this is that we go around believing we’re superman, and we don’t need any help. So we won’t ever let the doc know we’re having any problems at all, and we hide what problems there are.
BTW, the problems might be something we’re doing wrong… or it might be something someone else is doing wrong. Or it might everyone doing everything right but the outcome isn’t as expected.
It doesn’t help that some (not all) docs really expect us to be superman but offer us no help, just criticism.
I would love it if the doc offered to help me become superman :-). But oh, the kryptonite!
I won’t lie – I have issues with people that lie. I don’t like being lied to so I won’t lie to someone else. I am like BSC though and won’t volunteer information if I think it is going to cause a problem. If that doctor asked me point blank though, I would tell him the truth.
Jaclyn, I sometimes use a different meter for what I call the “our of range” readings Specifically an old one touch mini without a download port… so even if I bring it in, I can “show” that I’ve been testing X amount of times, but they can’t get at the data. I don’t consider this lying, as much as avoiding confrontation about things that happened weeks/months ago. Typically these are things that I’ve already handled, and I’ve moved on from… if I walked into an endo appointment at 500, then I’d have something to talk about, but I don’t really need to rehash why I had a 508 and a HI three weeks ago, due to a “diet” coke mishap, KWIM?
I’m not high enough like that to truly effect my A1C, so I’m not worried about it.
At dx at 16, yes. I tested rarely, forged bg logs, etc, etc. It didn’t occur to me until a few years later that lying defeated the purpose of going to the doctor to begin with. The reasons I lied back then aren’t totally clear to me, though I would guess that it was to avoid disapproval of the doctor and possibly a refusal to admit to myself that I wasn’t doing all I could. I won’t lie anymore and, if anything, share more info than is necessary…
I don’t lie however I don’t usually do more than glance at my logs before my appointments so the doc will sometimes show up with all the low readings circled or whatever and go “this is not good, do you still feel these?” and I’ll sort of answer fumblingly but if they were more than 2-3 days before, the chances of me reconstructing the specific carb/ insulin scenario can be rather slim?
Why would I do that? I think that people who feel guilt-tripped and so lie to their doctor are going on outdated ideas about the patient/doctor relationship that the doctor is the grown-up and we are small children who need to be obedient. And when we don’t feel like being obedient, we lie. The doctor is a service provider the same as a waitress or a mechanic, only a lot more expensive. I pay them (or my insurance company does) to provide me the service. If they’re not providing the service I feel I need (like say refusing to put me on insulin when I know that is what I need), I fire them, the same as I would the waitress who insisted I should eat a hamburger when I asked for a vegie burger. If they are rude to me (as in belittling my self-care) I would fire them the same as I would the waitress who told me I was a fool for wanting a vegie burger instead of a meat burger.
If I lie to “please the doctor” what purpose does it serve other than keeping me in denial? If my blood sugar is usually 250 and I write down 120, how will I get the help I need to get it down? In addition I’ll feel like a fake every time I test. Or if I just don’t test at all I’ll really feel foolish when I’m told my leg needs to be amputated. I don’t tell the truth to my doctor because I’m such a moral ethical person, but because if I’m spending my time and money to go ask his opinion, I need to provide him with the facts.
As an aside to verify my lack of morals, lol, when I was living in Guatemala and paying full price for my medications (or what Guatemala calls full price), I came back to the U.S. for a visit and went to see a doctor telling him I’d returned there to live so that I could then get my meds covered by insurance sent to me and save a lot of money. He actually is the doctor I see now that I’ve really moved back here and I confessed my lie to him. (He didn’t say anything but didn’t kick me out of the office either)
It seems odd that this discussion is being featured two years after it was first introduced. Lol!
How about this scenario. A member of another D sites admits that he made false charts showing highs and lows he did not actually have. He wanted a pump and already had an A1c below 6.0, so he thought that would justify his pumping. It worked! The doctor approved so he could avoid the lows and highs. He is now a happy pumper. If he had not lied he would not be pumping now. He wanted the pump for the conveniences it offers.
I offered my charts in 2007 to my endo and thought about doing what the other fellow did. There were some highs and lows, but not so many. My A1c had been below 6.0 for several years. My endo said that after 62 years of diabetes without pumping, I deserved the opportunity of experiencing the conveniences that pumping offered. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was so pleased! I got what I wanted without lying. Was that my reward for being truthful? Lol! My A1c’s have remained very much the same (5.4-5.9) since that time and I have even fewer lows and highs than before. I have also narrowed my range. I could have been denied a pump, but I got lucky with that endo.
So what would you do if you had a situation like the fellow on the other D site? You want something bad, but your telling the truth will probably not get you what you want. A lie might work, if it isn’t detected. So…what would you do???
Even funnier that there are more posts now than from 2009. I noticed when I posted the original was very old but since there were more current than old ones, I figured I may as well join the crowd!
You say your friend got the pump because he fudged his readings, but how do you know that he would not have gotten the pump being honest? You were honest & got a pump. If I really wanted a pump and a doctor would not support me, I would change doctors.
I agree with you Kelly! My diabetes doctor I started seeing in 1977 did not approve my getting a pump because my control was so good. Typically poor control and a lot of hypos justifies a pump in many doctor’s minds. I saw the endo that approved of my pump to get a second opinion. Now I see both of these doctors. I see the original doctor because he is an internist and serves as a good GP. It was unusual that my endo approved since my control was good. The fellow on the other site was much younger than me, and probably would have been denied by my endo. My endo seemed genuinely impressed and even sorry for me that I had used injections for 62 years. It almost seemed like she was rewarding me for putting up with that for so long.
Specifically an old one touch mini without a download port… so even if I bring it in, I can “show” that I’ve been testing X amount of times, but they can’t get at the data. I don’t consider this lying, as much as avoiding confrontation about things that happened weeks/months ago. Typically these are things that I’ve already handled, and I’ve moved on from… if I walked into an endo appointment at 500, then I’d have something to talk about, but I don’t really need to rehash why I had a 508 and a HI three weeks ago, due to a “diet” coke mishap, KWIM?