What I Really Want Everyone To Know About Living With Diabetes

This following post is not necessarily aimed toward anyone particular, although someone did just make a statement yestarday that is the cause of me writing this post. If you are reading this and ever said anything to me along these lines, or to someone you know, please know that I don’t mean any of this in an offensive way whatsoever. I’m just trying to enlighten my readers, and maybe there is a bit of venting added as well.

 What do I really want you to know about living with diabetes??? A huge pet peeve is hearing “ I could never do that”. This statement is made in regards to so many areas of diabetes it’s unbelievable and when people say it,  it drives me crazy and depending on my mood, how it’s said and who it’s coming from I might want to try an enlighten them, or punch them in the throat. I do believe this statement is made out of complete and total ignorance because in reality the person saying it has no idea what they are saying or what that would mean. In my opinion, although there are many diabetics, Type 1, Type 2, or gestational or whatnot that do not take care of themselves,  I feel that they may not understand the true nature of what they are doing to themselves or even what this statement means to them and their lives or due to lack of education or sadly maybe they really don’t care, and they are the ones that struggle with “doing this”. That breaks my heart, and I don’t judge, it just makes me sad because both of my grandpas’ had Type 2. One took amazing care of himself and was able to get off of insulin and manage with diet, exercise and a pill and the other slowly killed himself by eating whatever and whenever he wanted and not taking the correct amounts of insulin or carb counting. It may not have been diabetes that actually killed him in the end but I know that it contributed a great deal to all of his health issues that did end his life.

Let’s do it this way, let’s take diabetes out of the equation completely. I want you to image the following without thinking about anything that you think you know about diabetes…

 You are given a choice. Limbs that are fully functional, but you have to work for them to stay that way or neuropathy with limbs that lose circulation, feeling and maybe possibly even have to be amputated. What do you choose?

 You are given a choice. Your eyesight as it is now or Retinopathy which may lead to severe vision loss if not complete blindness. Which will you choose?

 You are given a choice. Healthy kidneys that function properly or kidneys that go into shut down mode and you have to go through dialysis, if you are lucky maybe get a kidney transplant. Which do you choose?

 You are given a choice. A healthy pregnancy with a healthy child or a pregnancy with all kinds of issue that put both you and your child at risk and the very likely possibility of miscarriage or a child born with mental issues, deformed body parts, missing organs, the list can go on. Which do you choose?   

 You are given a choice. Life or death. Which do you choose?

By now, I hope you get my point. I didn’t choose to get diabetes. No one else that ever develops it chooses it either. I’m sure before I had it I would probably think the exact same phrase I hate hearing. “I could never do that”, when in fact if I didn’t choose to fight for the first choice in the above then it would be most likely that I’d end up with the second choice. So saying “I could never do that”, I don’t believe that most of you that have thought that or said would really go that route. You COULD DO IT if you had to. If you wanted to have the best quality of life possible then you would fight with every fiber of your being to do what you could to keep your limbs, your eye sight, your kidneys, yourself healthy for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, and for your very life. I don’t think a lot of people who are like my grandpa understood that. They think that they are untouchable even though this deadly disease has its grip on them. They think that it won’t happen to them. It might not immediately, it might take some time, but the likely hood of it happening is greater than it not happening if diet, exercise, carb count, insulin figuring is not all a part of management, if there is no management. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy food, I’m a huge foodie! Weekends are a favorite time to go out and try the newest restaurant in town or try out a favorite. I love to cook, I love to try new recipes and just because I eat healthy doesn’t mean I never eat unhealthy. As a matter of fact over the weekend we tried out a donut shop that we’ve been saying that we wanted to try and hadn’t gotten around to yet. But because I had a donut, I had to work at it to make sure that my blood sugar didn’t go too high because of that donut. It does take a whole lot of work and if you’ve followed my blog you’ve seen that there is burn out. It’s a fact, it can’t be helped burn out is going to happen. But then eventually I realize why I’m fighting for all these things on a daily basis and I get back on track to how I’m eating when and how I should, and managing things the best I am able. There is no guarantee that despite the fight that I will win and that these awful things that I’m fighting against will never happen, they still could, but the chances are greater that they won’t or at least I'm delaying them if I continue to do what you think “you could never do”.   If you think “you could never do it”…. the carb counting, insulin injections, finger sticks, self restraint and anything else that by now is second nature for me, YOU COULD DO IT if you had to! Because I believe you would want to choose the best for yourself and your health. You never realize how strong you are until you have no other choice and you are doing things you never thought you could.