Telling Who and When?
Just a note to start, I am doing fine and I will write a blog about my surgery and other adventurers later in the week.
So yesterday there is a blog running that I wrote before my surgery, about my not telling the school nurse I was diabetic. It is both a bit funny and ironic. If you missed it on this site, fell free to check out Tamra’s blog site at:
I encourage you to go to her site, because it is a great read and not just my blog, but Tamra is doing some great writing and her stories are worth reading. I hope you check them out.
So the issue at hand is who and when to tell? I admit my mistake (not telling) on Tamara’s site and I suppose my attitude is pretty much the same for many Diabetics. Not telling about our diagnosis is akin to a modern Horatio Alger story. We Americans (actually I think most diabetics love these stories) and the narrative it carries. Basically we love the rags to riches, self-invention, I will do this on my own stories. Many of us (including me) rely on these fictional stories for our understanding of the world. Later this story was echoed in the Great Gatsby story of self-invention and reinvention. It is a common theme and has long history of publication in America but it does have some international appeal.
This theme of self-reliance above community has been adopted by many diabetics (men in particular, but also diabetic women) this is not however a gender based argument. It has been my experience that many of us tend to construct walls and barriers around our diabetes as a first response to the disease. We want to hide it, protect it, like a keep it like a wound we are afraid to show. It is amazing what we do to hide our disease. We do this like we are somehow damaged, or guilty of some invisible crime we want to keep from our neighbors. I will show no weakness because I need no help. It is the essence of the Horatio Alger story. I will do it on my own, because I alone can be counted on to overcome this disease.
I did that, I bet you might have done it as well. But the outcome is so bad both for us individually and other diabetics who rely on our social context to understand and interpret what diabetes means for them.
So the questions how to help diabetics come out of their shell of self-reliance and understand that diabetes is really a social as well personal disease? I have long argued that we need a more comprehensive approach to mental health and diabetes especially for young adults (those 12 to 25 who face this terrible isolation).
So what can we do? For one thing we can support “The National Diabetes Clinical Care Commission Act (H.R. 1074/ S. 539). While this does not specifically set up clinical care guidelines for a diabetic mental health it does establish “The National Diabetes Clinical Care Commission Act” which may over time address some of the very real diabetic mental health issues. In fact it is not just diabetic, it is also all chronic ailments but that is another blog.
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PS: it’s good to be back, I think