I hardly ever test, bolus, etc. I honestly don't know how I'm still living. I just never feel sick so I have no motivation to get into a routine and take care of myself. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I know a lot of people get motivation grom their significant other or family members but my family sees nothing wrong with my health either and don't know how to motivate me to do what I know I need to do and have done when I was younger.
How long can your body handle an A1c of 9.7 - an average of 214 mg/dl? Do you really want to find out? Perhaps you have a major depression and with some helping advice better times will come. Please seek help - your family needs you.
Not to be morbid, but go and do an image search on "Type One Diabetes Complications". When you're done being sick to your stomach, go test your basal rates and start testing :D
You may not feel sick because you probably don't remember what it is to feel good. I second Holger's suggestion about checking to see whether you're suffering from depression and if you are getting some help. Why not pretend you're starting over and just check before each meal and bolus appropriately. Even that small change will make a world of difference in how you feel and that improvement may be all the motivation you need.
Good luck,
Maurie
I think in the end you have to decide to love yourself. You know that high blood sugars are harmful. You shouldn't live your life for others, you should live it for yourself. If you can't love yourself and care about yourself, it really doesn't matter what you significant other or family does. In the end, all that matters is whether you care about yourself.
I personally find this website inspiring - I go through a week or two of crappy diabetes management, and then I come on here and read stories from people who are so good at taking control of their diabetes that I am inspired to be the same. And isn't it motivational to know that it's possible to be better?
Thanks for the whole "your family cares about you". I honestly don't think I'm depressed. I know that sounds like denial but I don't have any reason to be depressed. I just don't feel any motivation to do what I know how to do. I looked up the images but how do I convince myself that it could happen to me. I guess I don't feel like a really love myself but I don't feel like I WANT to die. I want to be a high school teacher and am in college right now persuing my dream. This website is amazing!! I also love getting on youtube and watching some of the videos on there.
Thanks for your support!
Do you have a good Diabetes team to work with, Elizabeth? If you're not motivated it might help to have a good professional who will give you tips and cheer you on. Setting small goals is a good way to start so you don't get overwhelmed. Like say, testing and bolusing for breakfast first. Or getting your basals tweaked first, whatever, just start somewhere. Also reading and immersing yourself in D related activities. Using Insulin is a good basic book to work out all the numbers, but perhaps someone else can suggest something that is lighter and more motivation oriented?
Finally if you can find a Type 1 group you will have others around you who will be good role models for you and motivate you to do more for yourself. If you don't know of any hospital attached programs, you could check with the JDRF and see what they have available near you. Some branches have started to focus on activities for adults. I think that might really help.
I don't know how long you have had Type 1 but one thing I can tell you is that it eats effects you from head to toes and from the inside out. When you will finally feel the comps it will motivate you because it's like a cancer...it's silent until the comps become more pronounced. It takes time to affect you. My suggestion is that you get motivated because only you can do that and no one else.
I've had to hire a lot of teachers.
Teachers are role models. Now it's YOUR TURN to get yourself in role-model-spiffy shape. Stick with me here: My A1c is 5.7 to 6. Teaching means keeping it that way. Teaching is scheduling, prepping, and professionally managing. It means for me:
7 am I test and record. I give my 11.5units of Lantus.
8 am I'm out the door having eaten a 16 gram carbs breakfast and taken 4 u Humalog. a 1:4 ratio, and in the food book: exactly what I ate, 16g, and 4u H
12 noon I test and record. I eat a 20 gram carbs lunch and take 5 u Humalog. I record what I've eaten in a food book - to the right, 20 g, and to the right of that, 5 u H.
2:30-3 I test and record. I eat a second 20 gram carbs lunch and take 5 u Humalog.
6pm I'm back home, test and record. Eating 20 grams carbs supper, fish, salad, 5 u Humalog.
7:30pm Test and record. Give correction if needed. Often there's evening activity.
9pm Test and record. Give 1.5 u Lantus.
Getting ready for teaching as a life's work requires routinizing, routinizing, routinizing.
I think positively setting up a routine is what you need for teaching and if I were your supervising teacher, I'd ....... Include diabetes management in your routine so you have NO SURPRISES.
I could try negative motivation. I have lots of stories of how people got into trouble when they had no testers and no strips. Disability is no fun. But getting ready for a teaching profession is the better challenge, and it requires getting yourself ready to be the role model that parents want to meet with, that parents want their children, their teens, and their college students to look up to.
Wow that is kind of eye opening! I suppose parents would want their children with the best role models like I always have. I honestly think that when I started working a job that has crappy shifts put me out of routine. It's deffinately time to get back in one. Maybe I need to find a better job that let's me have some consistancy.
"the book of better" by chuck eichten is an excellent, lighter book on diabetes. he talks about how any little improvement moves us towards "better". very entertaining, but also informative and motivational, written in a very accessable style.
YOU make the routine. YOU make the consistency. YOU create it. YOU are not some blob being pushed around by a job. Teaching isn't a job. It's a PROFESSION. You DESIGN it.
You set GOALS for EACH day, You INSPIRE your students to WANT to ACHIEVE those goals. They fashion themselves after you. Take ahold. This is a great OPPORTUNITY!!!
Wow! Thank you so much!
Motivation is one of the toughest things there is. As a very smart executive once said, "You cannot motivate people -- that door is locked from the inside. All you can do is establish the conditions under which they can motivate themselves, if they choose to."
What that translates to is, everyone has to find their own personal key. For me, it was testing. For a long time I did the bare minimum in terms of management and had only mediocre control, which sounds very similar to what you're doing. Then two things happened: my A1c, which had always been somewhere in the sixes, climbed to 7.1. Right about the same time, I read a book that got me wanting to know how my BG was really behaving, as opposed to what I imagined it was doing, without any direct evidence.
So I started testing consistently and keeping a log. What I saw got me sufficiently worried to make me get off the fence and take action. I'll spare you the chapter and verse, but all the above happened last Winter and Spring, and as the result of what I began doing my control is now better than it has ever been. My last A1c was 5.7 and I expect the next one to be lower still.
Testing and seeing the numbers makes it impossible to pretend any longer. I know how my BG behaves now, I know what the long term result will be if I don't control it, and since there is still time to do something about it, I am.
That's what did it for me. You need to figure out what will do it for you.
Elizabeth, good for you for posting here! It's a big first step for you to acknowledge what's going on and take the first step to change it.
I can't really add anything to what's been said, except to set small goals. Test every morning. Once that's routine, test before lunch. Baby steps, but huge satisfaction is accomplishing them.
What is your goal for yourself around D? Having a concrete goal makes it easier to take action.
You can do this!!
Thank you everyone...I went to see my endo today and A1C was 10.3. Very disappointing but I knew that was coming. We talked about some things I can do to get better control and best idea was to set alarms on my phone. I think this will work for a little while but somehow I feel like I will ignore the alarms after a little while.
Otherwise my mini goal for now is to check every morning for a week. Starting tomorrow morning. We will see how this goes. Hopefully it works. Then after that it will be checking and bolusing every morning. Then lunch etc.
Well my alarm just went off so time to go test. :)
Hi Elizabeth,
I don't have much advice for you regarding motivation but your statement "I never feel sick" is what got my attention. I've had type 1 for more than 50 years and probably the first 25 I was like you, partly because we didn't have much or any technology for good control. My motivation was jump started with the invention of blood glucose testing, better insulins, pumps etc. I never cared much about diabetes control, just take one big long acting insulin shot a day, eat/drink anything, more candy when I felt hypo, but I was fascinated with these newer technologies that came along and I jumped at all of them, not exclusively because I wanted to improve my diabetes, I just always gravitate to new things and ideas. The better control just came along as a big benefit.
What I didn't expect was my 25 years of thinking "I feel OK" was abruptly contradicted. As my A1C came down, although A1C wasn't invented yet, I realized a whole, dramatic difference in the way I felt. Wow, this is how we're supposed to feel. What I thought was how us humans should feel was drastically false. I now look back and think how did I ever survive feeling SO bad, we just adapt. I also never thought I was depressed then but getting better control changed my mood, Wow, this is how feeling good is! I didn't happen overnight, it was gradual but dramatic.
Because I had adopted these new control technologies so early, I started pumps in the late 70's and was one of the first pump users, I had been invited to speak at a few ADA groups demonstrating/showing this new pump treatment. I was contacted by a woman who was struggling with probably the same motivational issues your experiencing. At that time I hadn't been emphasizing the "feel OK illusion" that I'm sure most type 1's experienced back then. We didn't have many tools for good control back then. This woman couldn't believe how much of my time was taken up taking care of my D control. She told me she was shocked by how much of my time was devoted to my D, she called me obsessive about it (which I know I am) and she was unwilling to change. She commented "your whole existence is taking care of your diabetes!" Yes, it does take lots of time, can be extremely frustrating, but I've learned, and keep learning that we have to accept "the hand we've been dealt". We have to "think like a pancreas" and it becomes the normal, no big deal. I don't dwell on the time I spend on D, it's the normal, like breathing.
The sad conclusion to this young woman's story is that she died a few months later at the hand of some snake oil salesman who convinced her that he could cure her diabetes by praying it away and convinced her to stop taking insulin, she was dead in a couple days before anyone in her family new what was going on. It still haunts me today.
I was also lucky because both my two siblings are also type 1, all diagnosed about the same time, all 3 of us more than 50 years now. This was my support group and also our family normal. Get involved with anyone you can, especially socially. My involvement with the ADA helped my motivation, just meeting and talking with others in the same boat.
Embrace the tools we have now days, you'll reap the benefits of good control and years from now you'll look back and know you're better for it. Even though it hasn't always been an easy trip sometimes I think I'm better because I have D and have overcome its challenges.
Good luck Elizabeth, you've already got a good start by just thinking and asking about it,
Frank
As someone earlier mentioned the effects of neglecting control take a long time to show but once they start it can be quite terrifying. This time last year I was ill, this year I hardly recognise myself. I feel like I've been given my life back. You may not feel ill at the moment but you can avoid a lot of pain and fear if you take control now. Also you won't feel bad about ignoring it. Taking control is the most massive pain in the bum sometimes but it's better than letting it control you. Also agree with Frank there, if this is how normal feels it's amazing. I didn't know what health felt like.
Elizabeth,
I'd like to see you do enough for yourself that you'll see a difference in the shortest period of time. Isn't that what you'd like? In 3 months of the right activities, you could have a 7 A1c!
I hope you will, instead, devise a plan that hits the activities that give you feedback and that give you direction for the insulin doses you need. Getting feedback quickly is what students need. You'll use it with your high schoolers. Use it with yourself.
It takes a routine, not one check every morning for a week. This is your body that you want to use for 30 years in a challenging profession! Get it in line by doing what's needed. Approach this with GUSTO!
You want both feedback and direction on doses. Did your Endo give you a team that will help adjust doses? If not, ask for one.