Something dawned on me tonight when I was writing an email. I don’t keep this in the front of my mind, but it IS on the back of my mind.
I’m 46. I try not to think about that very often.
When my father was 42, he was diagnosed with diabetes. When he was 46, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, told to put his affairs in order, put on oxygen, told not to be exposed to any illness, and sent home to die.
The good news, it took two more years for it to kill him.
Thus, I’m a bit paranoid.
I think that is a much better attitude than living with the hope that there was be a cure in 5 years. In fact, I’m sick to death of hearing people repeating that little information. What does that do for anyone? I think a lot of them don’t take as good care of themselves as they should, expecting that cure.
There is not going to be a cure for my kind of diabetes in 5 years, and even if there were, if I don’t take extremely good care of myself, I’m going to be dead in less than those 5 years.
I also find my own doctor’s concillartory message — there will be inhaled insulin in 5 years. Yeah, right, meal time insulin and the whole process is a pain in the rear.
So I’m on a pump, I test empteen times a day, and I keep my blood sugar as normal as possible. Not to live — but to keep from dying.
There have been good side effects from that — one of my students asked me why I hadn’t given the diabetes speech this year — well, I haven’t had a treatable hypoglycemic event in a year, and the last time was when we played Symlin games. I often eat a bit of sugar to keep from getting there, but haven’t gotten there.
And at lunch, they were trying to get me to eat some homemade ice cream — they were nice about it — and not pushy, but I made the choice not to. Then made the statement, did you realize that my blood sugar hasn’t been high even to make me bitchy in years — and my department chair said “and thank god for that!”. I didn’t realize it was that bad, and repeated to the same student who asked about the diabetes speech — and he AGREED!
Yes, Type 1s are taking care of themselves to keep living — but remember quite a few of us Type 2s are just trying to keep from dying.
I feel the need to add a bit more to this — when I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I wasn’t promised a cure. I was told to use my CPAP machine every night or I’d die. Of course, getting woken up by an upset technician during the diagnosis helped to. And my doctor DID mention that he sent someone for sleep apnea surgery, but he wasn’t going to do that anymore, because the patient died. Fatalist? Maybe, but you know what, I put that CPAP machine on every single night. And I also check my blood sugar empteen times a day, and strive for tight control. I haven’t had an AIC higher than 7.0 since I started this.