I guess I just need to vent a little. There is one thing that makes me angry when I talk with people about me being a diabetic. After some conversations that I have had in the many years of being a diabetic I hate it when people say “oh, he has diabetes so bad that he has an insulin pump attached to him all the time”. I try to explain that I choose to wear the pump for better control and to make my busy daily schedule a little easier. Another reason I choose to wear the pump is because of my active life style that I live. I do not wear it because I have diabetes bad, or because I have sugar (don’t you love that when people say that you have sugar, lol) I am not saying that diabetes is not bad. But the way I look at it is it’s in your hands! You can choose to make your future bad by not taking control of your diabetes or take care of it and have a better future! Im not saying I have been in perfect control all 33 years of being a diabetic, I just am thankfull that I woke up one day and started to take control. Sorry if I offended any one, I just don’t like it when people say that I have very bad diabetes because I wear a pump!
I am continually amazed at the level of ignorance surrounding diabetes. (I suppose I shouldn’t be, I didn’t know much about it before I was diagnosed, but the sheer bossiness and judgmental attitudes I’ve been running across on occasion… is very annoying.)
A few weeks ago I was at a meeting of a charitable organization which has a lot of diabetics as members, the first meeting since my diagnosis, and a very nice (usually) little old lady came up to me and told me, “I’ve got the same thing, although I don’t have it as bad as you do.” About all I could say to that was “Gee, thanks.” I’m on shots and she isn’t, but that doesn’t mean I have worse control, it just means I’m insulin-dependent and she’s insulin-resistant and she still has some semblance of a functional pancreas while mine comes out of a little glass bottle. Sheesh.
One time I had to see a different doc at my clinic for a sore throat and she looked at my medical records and noticed I was on a pump. She said, “Wow, you must have diabetes really bad to have to go on a pump!” Huh?! I tried to explain to her that that’s not the case, but she just didn’t get it.
An interesting point about that attitude is, however, that in America I had a1c’s around 6.6 with shots and my doc just had to fill out the “medical necessity” letter for the pump saying I needed one because my basal requirements are so different throughout the day and I have a lot of nocturnal hypoglycemia. That was it. Tada. Got my pump. I don’t know quite what the requirements are here in Germany, but after reading some other European stuff I’m kind of worried about what will happen when my pump is out of warranty in a little over a year. Will I get another one from the Germans? Or end up back on shots?! I read that in the UK you can’t get a pump (through insurance) until you can prove that there is no other way to get your a1c under 7.5%! So you actually have to do BADLY to be able to get a pump there. I never would have gotten one, I guess. They would have said shots were good enough for me. In the US I know that people are often told they must have decent control and get their a1c’s under 7.5 before they’ll let them go on a pump, so basically the exact opposite!
Overall it seems that in the US you have to prove you can take good care of yourself first and that the pump may only improve your numbers a little bit, but in other parts of the world you have to prove you cannot take good care of yourself and that the pump would improve your numbers a lot.
A lot of people (perhaps most) seem to think that “TYPE 2” means you’re on a special diet and some pills and “TYPE 1” means you have to give yourself those… omg… scary… “I could never do that!”… SHOTS! I’ve heard that so many times. You know, someone’s aunt has “type 1”. She was diabetic for years and then when she was 67 it got so bad she had to start insulin, so that’s type 1, right? I’ve often wished they’d just change the darn name of one of the “types” to something completely different. After all, while the results of the disease are about the same (high blood sugar and the ensuing complications), the cause is quite different.
Hmmm. Who gets to claim the title “diabetes”, then? Since so many people are confused by it, lets just give it to the type 2’s. They now officially have “diabetes”. We, on the other hand, now have “Catastrophic Ruthless Attack on the Pancreas”, otherwise known as “CRAP”.
I have heard this too, that you must have really bad diabetes if you take insulin. I’m on shots, not a pump. I actually could manage without any insulin at all- I’m early LADA still honeymooning- but I get better control and can eat a more healthy diet with insulin. My A1C is 5.6 (down from 7.3 at diagnosis). So I have wanted to say “no, YOU have the bad diabetes, if your BG is at a dangerously high level”. My cousin in England has Type 2 but doesn’t believe he has diabetes at all since he is not using insulin!
Another thing to blame the ADA for… diabetes is really a set of diseases revolving around blood sugar, and there are lots of little intricacies that get lost in the many, many generalizations that happen with it.
I like to explain my own autoimmune diseases (I’ve also got Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, woo) as my immune system believing it’s a squad of Blue Vulture troopers straight out of Paranoia.
"That beta cell looks suspicious. I think it’s a Communist mutant traitor. Better zap it to be sure.“ zap zap zap
"Right, send in the clones. … whatdya mean, ‘what clones?’?!”
Most folks can grasp that – well, maybe not the Blue Vulture squad part, but the rest, definitely. Unfortunately among older folks with twenty-year-out-of-date ideas about diabetes, insulin equates to “about to die”. sigh
Back in the days when I was still wearing a pump (long story on that, but the bottom line is that I hated every minute of it, and I actually had great control before the pump, so there was not much in the way of improvement that a pump could provide me, but I digress), I had someone say the same thing to me in a movie theater. Unfortunately, the public perception among the ignorant masses is that insulin usage is a sign of failure (applicable only type 2, since obviously those of us with type 1 don’t have any choice, but many don’t even know there is more than one type of diabetes or what that means … read on for details …). Not wanting to go into a lengthy explanation of the details, my response to her was that actually the pump was to help prevent my diabetes from becoming bad, and that its likely that people who do not use them were much more likely to “have it bad” than those who wear a $6,000 medical device.
Its unfortunate, but the vast majority of people are very ignorant regarding diabetes and such statements are indicative of that ignorance. Consider that in March 2007, Medtronic’s Minimed division commissioned a survey conducted by Harris Interactive which found that 80% of the American public cannot distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Even more troubling was the finding that nearly 67% of those who responded to the poll incorrectly believed there is already a cure for type 1 diabetes! Among the other key findings were as follows:
67% mistakenly believed there is a cure for type 1 diabetes
51% knew there were two types of diabetes
36% thought there was either a “type 3 or 4” diabetes
25% believed that proper diet could “cure” the disease
32% believed exercise could be a “cure”
Sources: Medtronic Inc., Harris Interactive survey of 2,436 American adults, Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The reasons for this public ignorance are numerous, including the short attention span of the average American who gets most of their news in 30 second sound-bytes on television, poor education (how many could pass a grammar school biology test?), limited personal experience with the disease (or with people who have it), media coverage that is more often than not incomplete, inaccurate or both, and longstanding beliefs that organizations such as the American Diabetes Association have done absolutely nothing to correct.
Try not to lose too much sleep over it, and do your best to remain patient with people who say things like this. If you can educate even 1 person, the world will be a much better place for everyone!
Yes, many people don’t get it. As much as I dislike that, most people have no reason to care at all about diabetes. A real good reason to “get it” is to be someone or care about someone diagnosed with it/ We are a minority with a specialized problem. The best I can do (beside living the best I can with it) is to become a just little more understanding about other people’s problems.
Oh Yes I love it soooo when (practily) anybody in my family says I have “sugar” also how bad I am to be wearing the pump! Yes when I started out 20 years ago wearing it I was a “bad” diabetic but like you now I choose to wear it! Some ppl just make me so mad! Go ahead and vent I think a lot of us pump wears know exactly what your talking about!
I have had db for 33 years also. Back in 1985, when I switched to multiple injections my family got really upset because my “diabetes had gotten worse”.
A couple of years ago when I broke my ankle, I had a follow-up with a resident. We were talking about db and the possibility for slow healing. He said “how much insulin do you take per day?” I told him about 32 units and he replied, “oh, that’s not so bad”, meaning that from his frame of reference, the more insulin you took, “the worse” the db is. I guess he never thought to look at my AlC - all my health records were in that same computer.
Kathy,
Drs really surprise me when They say things like that and I’ve had more than a few do it to me! I tohought they WERE SUPPOST TO KNOW THAT!! Was I wrong or what? That’s why I really hate having another do anything at all to me!!!
I guess I just got lucky about ten years ago. I found a doctor that has diabetes. I don’t care how much you read or study about diabetes, unless you have you won’t realy understand it. He has helped so much in the past ten years, actualy he is the one that got me to go on the pump.
I officially now have CRAP…perfect, says it all. This has been worrisome to me as long as I’ve been diagnosed…printed info about Diabetes, regarding potential cures, and meds, etc. that have nothing to do with Type 1. They are 2 different diseases! How is it that even healthcare professionals can’t get that? There are plenty of conditions that I am blessedly ignorant about, so it’s hard to blame people for being unaware. My complaint is being lumped in with another illness that has little to do with me.
I get the same reaction when people realise that I am on 5 injections a day and it really annoys me. I usually ask them how much they actually know about Diabetes and the response is usually’ very little’ so I then explain about my regime and educate them a little…grrrrrr!
I had a very good friend with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and she was totally amazed when I actually knew what it was - she was soo fed up with having to explain it.
Hey Leslieann…We take our smiles where ever we can! I am new to the site, and compared to you, relatively new to the disease. I was diagnosed 3 years ago at age 50. I feel sort of cavalier at times as I have developed this so late and live a pretty healthy life style…thinking Iam less likely to develop complications. I know that is irresponsible of me. I can only imagine the ups and downs (highs and lows!) you have gone through in 38 years. I just met a woman who had been type 1 since childhood, like yourself, who had a kidney and pancreas transplant and is cured! How common is that? I quess she’s gone through some serious health issues for them to consider her a kidney transplant candidate. I hope you are healthy and motivated…I admire someone who has had to deal with this for so long.
