Hello everyone,
Its been a while since I was on here. This website and everyone here was such a great help for me when I first switched from multiple daily injections to a pump. I’m sorry I haven’t been such a help to anyone in return. I recently met a newly diagnosed diabetic and its been good having to talk to someone about what its like to have diabetes. I also felt good helping her change her dexcom and talk about carb counting and ways to lower our blood sugars. It helps that I have much more experience.
However, I have been diabetic for over 7 years now and so I’m not as careful or as sensitive to the whole topic. This is making me feel guilty because I kinda miss the first few months and how my mother and I used to take care of my diabetes. I now eat whatever I want and bolus for it, if it was too high I won’t freak out as much and I think I’ve pretty much accepted diabetes as a part of my life. I try not to look at it as an inconvenience as much as I can.
Yet, I understand that this is a relatively new situation to my new friend and it is hard (i still do cry whenever I change a dexcom and it bleeds and the sensor fail and I would have to change it, or when I’m in the middle of shopping and rip my infusion site by mistake, or when I play with my friend’s kid and hit my dexcom or my infusion site and have to hide how much it hurts)
She has every right to go through all phases: denial, anger, depression, acceptance, etc. I just had already went through them all and sometimes revisit them. I have been dealing with a lot lately and recently started seeing my psychologist again and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder I. I haven’t told anyone. (I didn’t tell anyone when I was first diagnosed and was on meds last year; I stopped taking them a while ago)
People don’t get to see how I struggle everyday to leave bed or get some work done. They see my smily face, and hear my funny stories of how I’m too sweet and thats why I’m a diabetic but it gets exhausting. I try not to think of the future or the complications or having kids. I am trying my best and at least I’m quite successful at having a low A1c (7.1) and a semi controlled BG levels.
P.S. there’s a cotton candy bag over the shelf in front of me and I am so tempted to eat some but I already had cake at a friend’s birthday party yesterday and would feel guilty (because my friend haven’t had a burrito since she was diagnosed and here I am eating sweets two days in a row)
I think I’m gonna have a little, I deserve it (I went for a 20-jog and my BG is 98)
Anyone has a way of dealing with the overwhelming feeling of having diabetes most days?
You’re alive! That’s how I deal with this every single day (I mean, remembering that I’m alive). Waking up in the morning is an accomplishment more so for us than non-Ds. You got the help you needed when you were first diagnosed and didn’t succumb to DKA. You drove somewhere sometime in the very recent future (maybe, I guess you may not have) and you made it home alive and well. I almost died when I was 11 months old because of this illness, my mom’s best friend’s hubby died due to a hypoglycemia induced car accident. I remember those things every day, and I allow myself to be proud of small accomplishments. No one is going to give me a trophy for making it through the night tomorrow morning, but I will feel glad I did and I won’t feel silly for feeling that way. I try to remember all the good things I have in my life, even the small things help. I have D, but hey, at least I’ve got some really comfortable shoes on.
And the not everyday stress? I just let myself feel it. I give in and cry, scream, sleep in, hide myself, watch really bad TV all day, whatever. Then I get on with my life. I feel that since I can’t take a vacation from D, I can take off my big girl panties, and take a vacation from life (a short one) every once in a while.
Oh sweetie—I am so glad you have come back to check in. A lot of us here will understand exactly what you are feeling and @MissMargie expresses it so well…
I call the Bad days my Plodding Days—one foot in front of the other, don’t even try to look too far ahead through the fog, just keep moving—stay in motion, one baby step at a time and you will get through the day.
And don’t forget the things that can actually impact your state of being physically, like putting on your favorite music and dancing around the living room—those endorphins are a powerful life force…Blessings and please keep us posted now that you have come home…Judith in Portland…
Seconding what everyone else has said. Some days you can shrug it off and just go about your business. Other days you have to work really, really hard to do that, if you can manage it at all. We’ve all been there and done that, too many times to count.
I figure it this way: some days I have to work hard at it and still can’t always get the results I want. Other days, I can just coast and it’s (almost) effortless. When the former is happening, I think of the latter and say to myself, “this, too, shall pass–it always does” . . . and just do what I am able to do, try to smell the flowers, and move on. Tomorrow, as Scarlett O’Hara reminds us, is another day.
