A yoga teacher (who is now the director of a yoga teacher training program in Berkeley) started yelling at me in the middle of yoga class, regarding my pump, "How can you wear that in class? Why don't you take it off? How can you do inverted poses with it on?" Um, I have been doing inverted poses for 17 years wearing an insulin pump.
What in the world!!!???? He is one messed up person! That's pretty frightening that he's in management.
I know, I am always worried that people are looking at what I am eating and judging me. They probably aren't, but I am still self-conscious about it.
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Pump girl, people really do not look at you as much as you think. Get those self-judgement imps out of your own mindset. YOU know what you are doing and it really does not matter what others think you "should" or "should not" be eating because you have diabetes...
I have learned that most people really know very little about diabetes. Many of them are frightened about the possibility that anyone could get it, including themselvesā¦ They may say things out of a concern that is not based on facts. Use their mistaken words as a teachable moment rather than a judgment of you. Many people do want to know about diabetes and its management, either for themselves or for their loved ones.
If they are the type of people who can neither be led to waters of diabetes truths nor be made to drink, then kindly smile at them and thank them profusely them for being "So knowledgeable about diabetes. You know even more than I do and I live with this every day! How amazing!"
Say it repeatedly, the exact same words, whenever they mention their opinionated comments. They will either go away or on to another topic. I know. I have done this before and it works. Do forgive my āsweet sarcasmā, but it works, and such individuals avoid conversations like that with me in the future.( Or either they avoid me, which is not a problem either, lol)
God bless,
Brunetta
Type 1 46 years
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Brunetta,
Great advice!!! I admire the fact that you've been dealing with this for 46 years! That's incredible! I simply can't imagine how much stuff you have heard during that time. I was just diagnosed a little over a year ago with Type 1 at age 34. It's been quite the adjustment because friends and family assume that since I was diagnosed as an adult that I have Type 2. This compounds the problem even more. Because of their ignorance about diabetes, they are constantly commenting about what I eat. They want to see me "get off insulin" and they think I can do that by eating right and exercising. So frustrating!! Anyway, bit by bit, I am learning to advocate for myself and others in the DB community. I'm still new to the world of diabetes, but I am trying to learn all I can so that when I am faced with questions or comment, I can come back with accurate information.
God bless you too!!
LOL! I hope you tell them that!! :-)
What a none PWD says will never bother me...only someone that's insulin dependent has even a clue what we go through, I'm always thinking of my BG control it's intertwined into my life, my family, my job, play time, 24/7, it's always there.
[we baked you a sugar free pie] and I say no thanks...:-)... I'm going to have a piece of that beautiful carrot cake with cream cheese frosting....[Oh that's OK then you can take that pie home with you]...I say OK and the pie goes in the trash when I get home...you see sometimes there is just a failure to communicate..with a none PWD...;-)
Just make the best out of every situation and go on with your life...
When I was in high school I bought a can of Diet Coke from a supermarket, and the lady behind the counter went on about how no one should drink stuff with artificial sweetener (this was the mid-90s). I told her that I had to drink diet. She was like, "No one has to! Unless you're allergic to sugar, of course." I walked away wondering, first, if it's possible to be allergic to sugar, and second, wondering if diabetes counted (in her mind) as an allergy to sugar.
"You look too fit and healthy to be a diabetic, are you sure it's actually diabetes?"
"My friend says she cured diabetes by only eating 500 calories a day and drinking this magic herb mixed with soda water, google it"
"Oh X injections a day, my friend only has to take tablets so yours must be really bad, if you'd looked after yourself better earlier and tried harder maybe you wouldn't have to take so many injections now"
"God you're on a pump, jeez you're diabetes must be really out of control to need one of those"
"Oh so you can't have children I guess, because you'd pass it on and they would end up going blind and losing legs and stuff"
Ugh, the pump thing - so true! "Oh, it must be so serious then". *eye-roll*
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Are you dieing? Are you gonna die?
Yes, everyone is going to die.
My absolute favorite was when someone asked if I really thought I could handle med school with diabetes. What am I supposed to do, go lock myself in my room for the rest of my life?
Not so much with diabetes, but this is similar to my response with blindness (and sometimes with diabetes, but mostly with blindness). People think I am AMAZING and COURAGEOUS for living on my own, having a full-time job, going to graduate school, travelling on buses and trains and planes independently, and having a variety of hobbies. What else am I supposed to do, curl up in a ball and hide? That is just not an option!
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My mom was HORRIFIED when I had to go on insulin. Scared the crap out of me and made me feel horrible. I have supportive friends and I love this place because it taught me to not be so hard on myself. Thank goodness there is insulin!
Actually, the Cycloset makes me completely dependent on coffee, since it makes me extremely tired. (Though it also makes me need to eat carbs with every dose--completely counterintuitive for a diabetic.)
And honestly, if anything was going to keep me from getting through med school, it would be fibromyalgia, not diabetes.
At least it didn't make me mad to hear that--just sad about the state of people's opinions of me. Dehydrated cane juice, though? That made me angry.
I recently told a story that involved nearly making my best friend throw up from tasting my diet soda (it didn't taste diet to me and she can't handle artificial sweeteners). My audience was very quick to jump to the "Are you a diabetic?" Because needing my soda to be diet must automatically mean I'm a diabetic.
The good news is that I got to demonstrate how to test diet soda with my meter to two PhD astrophysicists.
Good grief?!! Do some of these doctors go to med school??!!! I'm sorry but an A1C of 6.2 doesn't mean you are no longer diabetic! Holy cow Batman!!!
If i ever got that i would probably drop a nice F bombā¦ i really do admire other peopleās patience