The scale of what we do -- diabetes by the numbers

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Back in the early '80’s I attended my father’s retirement party. He worked at a company for over 36 years. My father worked in a dispatch office for a major airline and his job contained no natural breaks, so he often ate at his desk, brown-bag lunches that my mom packed for him.

One of the comments I remember from that night was one retiree reminiscing about what’s contained in a long career. He said something like, “During my career my wife packed me 8,820 lunches.” Hearing that statistic, to me, was a testament to how long periods of time can often be measured in metrics that are not only based in time.

Thinking about my career with diabetes, I started toting up some of the things we do every day, week after week, month after month as the years play out. Diabetes rudely intruded into my life in January, 1984. While that was 32 years and seven months ago, I’ve found some more interesting ways to measure that time.

  • I’ve had diabetes for 284,648 hours. For every hour of every day with never a day off.

  • If I ate three meals per day, that means that I’ve calculated and delivered 35,679 boluses.

  • Using an average of ten strips per day, a conservative estimate for me, I checked my blood glucose and pricked my poor fingers 118,929 times.

  • Seeing my endo four times per year means I’ve done the doctor-visit thing 130 times.

  • I’ve used an insulin pump for almost all of 29 years. That equates to 3,528 infusion set changes.

  • My CGM use dates back to 2009. I’ve actively watched my blood glucose in real time for the last 61,320 hours.

I recently read somewhere in the diabetes online community the philosophy that we should place life first and diabetes second. I get that sentiment. Your diabetes should not replace your primary focus on family, friends, and social causes you value. I do get that.

But, looking at the overwhelming burden that diabetes commands, and the penalties time will exact if you don’t pay sufficient attention to diabetes, if you always put diabetes second, there will be unhealthy consequences.

Now I realize, it’s all about the balance. If diabetes teaches anything, it’s to look for balance between competing demands. Life should come first; diabetes, however, does not like to be ignored. We live in the tension between those demands.

Please share your thoughts!

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As someone who only has 5,000 hours since diagnosis–but an estimated 20,000 hours prior to diagnosis which I nearly certainly was actively but unknowingly diabetic–

I look at your totals and am in awe of what you have been thru, and accomplished. It is the mark of a compassionate person to see life’s and diabetes’ balances, amidst these totals.

I also am hearing that song from “Rent”:
“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes-- five hundred twenty five thousand minutes in a year”

Fill them with love, as the song also says.

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The life with live., is matched by others facing challenges, those with cancer, ms, i have now idea what others face, I do know my aunt had polio and my partner died of AIDS.
At least I can see I can mange this.

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Put that way, the numbers - and the burden seems overwhelming. I’m also a “newbie” to diabetes, with it being only 36,535 hours since I was diagnosed (and no idea when it may have actually started), but even at that, it’s a huge task. Those 3,528 infusion set changes could have taken as much as 35,000 minutes (583 hours) to accomplish.

I honestly don’t want to think too much on this – might make it all seem impossible!

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I’ll hit my 25-year diaversary in about six weeks. That’s not quite as long as you, but the numbers are still impressive. And don’t forget some other numbers, like blood draws for A1c’s and highs and lows treated. Even if you just count one high and one low treated per day (which I’d say is very conservative!), that’s over 18,000 highs and lows treated in 25 years. I recently read in diaTribe that some people with Type 1 added up the diabetes-related decisions they made each day and, on average, made 120 diabetes-decisions per day. So, in 25 years I’ve made 1 million diabetes-related decisions (even if you subtract 95,000 decisions to account for the fact that, back in the '90s with R and NPH, I probably wasn’t making that many decisions per day).

I think this is one of the hardest parts about diabetes. Not just the issue of outright ignoring diabetes, but also finding that level of control that’s not so tight that it means diabetes is grabbing your attention every 15 minutes, but isn’t so loose that it’s dangerous.

I’ve read that we have a limited capacity of mental energy (and willpower), and so trying to divide that usable energy up between work, friends, family, personal goals, spirituality, hobbies, diabetes, and yourself and any other health isseus you may have, can really be a tough thing to balance at times. I’m on vacation right now, and just earlier today (I had an endocrinology appointment today)

I was reflecting on how different my diabetes control is now compared to several weeks ago when I was engaged in a very intense, condensed six-credit university course that was very active physically and had a very heavy reading load. I didn’t ignore diabetes, but I definitely let everything slip a bit simply for lack of time and energy, and let myself run high simply so that I wouldn’t have random, plummeting lows at the most inconvenient and dangerous times (or burn through my entire supply of glucose and backup glucose and food, which I did several times). This program has been a goal of mine for years, so it was immensely satisfying to complete the first course with a high grade… I just need to find ways to complete these things and be awesome at diabetes simultaneously. (And this makes me think of perfectionism, which is something I struggle with a lot in general, and the idea of accepting that we can’t be perfect at everything all the time, and that’s okay as well…)

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I like that.

We do need to be aware of our blessings, @Fraser70!

It makes me wonder if I would have filled those 583 hours better if I were not busy with diabetes plumbing.

Now there’s a metric I didn’t even think about. I know that diabetes has consumed a lot of my life. In some ways it’s made me a better person and in other ways it seems like such a waste.

Thank-you, @LADA_lady, @Fraser70, @Thas, and @Jen for stopping to share your comments!

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I have thought about the diabetes related decisions I have made compared to if I was not a person with diabetes, I still have to decide what to eat, when I should exercise , how healthy I could be, pretty much all the decisions a non diabetic must make, so it is down to counting carbs, and for those on insulin. the dosing question. It does Increase some but not all of the decisions I make in life.
If diabetes was the worse thing that happened in my life! Overal life would be better

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I think things are only a waste if you don’t learn from them or grow in some way. I am positive that diabetes has helped me grow in some way, even though I can’t say how yet (maybe in another 25 years…). I really like “deeper” discussions like this because it makes me think more about these things, and I think reflection is part of what helps a person to grow and learn from experiences.

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Also treating highs and lows (at what level to treat, how much to treat with, when to test again, whether more treatment is needed…), timing of when to eat after a bolus, deciding when to test, when to change pump sites or CGM sensors, when to use an injection to correct versus pump… I think a lot of times, though, multiple decisions are made in one go (such as what to eat, how much to bolus, what type of bolus to use, whether to test or rely on CGM for BG data, how long to wait before eating, whether to adjust the bolus for any other factors like imminent exercise…).

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Thank-you for that thought, Jen. I’ve been criticized for being a perfectionist, a criticism I don’t agree with. I think it’s essential to shoot for worthwhile targets because when you miss, and you will miss with diabetes, you’ll still accomplish something relatively close to worthwhile. It’s why I correct to 83 mg/dl (4.6 mmol/L) instead of 120 mg/dl (6.7 mmol/L).

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Of course. Balance is a lovely thought. It is hard to achieve. And there should Never be any shame attached to those times when it is just plain “a pipe dream”…It is hard work…Blessings…Judith in Portland…

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I agree, @Judith_in_Portland. Probably the most concise summary of my personal philosophy with diabetes management is Chuck Eichten’s idea that “life with diabetes can’t be perfect, make it better.” When diabetes balance eludes, reaching for better is truly the best one can do. Simply nudging marginally at the edge is worthwhile. Thank you for the comment, fellow Portlander!

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Oh my yes…Wish I felt well enough for a planned meet-up as I love those. Have been experiencing inexplicable bouts of debilitating nausea and vomiting which, as you can imagine, makes it really hard to plan an outing,

So I stay close to home, trying to find a pattern that I can present to my doc…Sigh…Blessings, as ever…

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This is going to sound facile and glib, and it’s not meant that way at all. When I read this thread, my first impulse was to do the computations and determine those numbers (test strips, injections, days and hours, etc., etc., etc.).

I didn’t do it.

The thing is . . . some of us have an effortless path through life, and most of us don’t. Not trying to minimize the differences of degree; they matter enormously.

But . . . you can’t fix yesterday. Those numbers won’t help me with today, or tomorrow. So I choose not to let them color my view of now. It’s a very individual thing. There’s no right and wrong. Only choice.

[It’s also late at night and my critical thinking may be even more feeble than usual. It is what it is. So be it.]

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Judith: my thoughts are with you for a speedy recovery! :heart:️

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Judith, please do contact your doctor if you haven’t already. Get well very soon!

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I’ve been called a perfectionist in other areas of life, and I know I am one. I think it’s, in part, why I find diabetes so frustrating at times. With diabetes, outcome is not always proportional to effort.

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Great perspective @Terry4, thank you! I’ll add another number: so far I’ve taken just about 7.5 liters of insulin. I find it pretty astonishing and cool that it took less than 2 gallons of that regulatory hormone to keep me very much alive and ticking for close to 41 years now.

I am sorry but I do not get that sentiment, and I do not subscribe to that philosophy at all. Thinking that there is a trade-off or some kind of fine balance between taking care of D versus the rest of your life is in my opinion a counter-productive misconception. If you spent a few minutes less checking your bg or a few seconds less deciding what to do about it, you would somehow be able to better focus on your family or the rest of your life? My experience is exactly the opposite. My family thinks that living with T1D is not a big deal not because I’ve ever neglected to take care of D but precisely because I’ve always tried to do the best I could to make it nor interfere with our lives. Just like everyone else, I have many things to do today that have absolutely nothing to do with D. I know I won’t be able to participate in any of that very well unless I routinely make some D-related decisions and actions throughout the day. Think positive, doing the best you can is not a trade-off.

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Your fingers protest that number! They’ve actually been poked more than 116,800 times (365 x 10 x 32).

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Doh! You’re right, @Shadow2. After the first ten thousand times, it does become a non-event! Thank you for checking the math. I’ll edit the post.

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