When you study something in a book for a few years and then try to take everything you’ve learned and apply it to a person, it’s not the same thing. People are not the same and they don’t know what to do with you. They don’t know how to talk to you and they tell you you’re doing things wrong.
Hi, my name is Christina and I’m diabetic.
I wrote the first blog on a whim, but I feel that those of you who read this need more a description of who I am. I’m not a textbook, I’m human. I don’t do things the precise way, because well, I either forget or don’t want to. We’re human. I’m human.
I doubt that you’ve read the ABOUT page, so I’m just going to tell you a bit more about myself. Since I was seven years old, I was told that I would have to check my blood sugar every day at least 3 times a day but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t until I got a doctor who yelled at me for not doing what I was told instead of explaining to me what was going on in my body, did I get on it. After that doctor, I had one who didn’t care. I didn’t have to check myself as much and so, I didn’t. I learned about things that could happen to me but I didn’t know that I could take control of my diabetes the way people drive a car.
I then found a doctor who was married to a diabetic, loved diabetes herself and told me, you have to understand what’s going on in order to fix it. Check and cover: Check your blood sugar and remember to take the amount of insulin to compensate for what you eat. I felt liberated. I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I knew how to manage and take care of my body. I remember her telling me, “You do what I tell you to do, tell me what happens and I’ll figure out what’s wrong.” I had never had a doctor like that before. The diabetic educator was that much better. Kim had been living with diabetes for over 29 years and she knew exactly what was going on in her body. She explained everything I needed to know and made me want to learn more.
I lost that doctor (hoping to get her back) because of insurance problems and recently went to see another doctor. Unlike Aleppo, this chick told me to switch to decaffeinated coffee because I told her my sugars went up when I had caffeine in my system. Aleppo just told me to take a unit or two of insulin. The differences were vast. I had gotten used to my liberation mentality and now this one was trying to keep me strict again. I had to explain to her that I knew the reason for things and that I wasn’t going to let that happen to me again.
Right now, I check my blood sugars between 7-10 times a day. I run out of strips so fast that I have to explain to my doctors what I do in order to get them to write me another prescription. When I have one strip left, I panic! I’ve learned that in order to keep control of myself, I need to know myself and checking my blood sugar is the answer to a lot of questions I have. I’m thirsty. Check blood sugar. My head hurts. Check blood sugar. I feel tired. Check blood sugar.
Sometimes, I may think I take the right amount of insulin, but I’m wrong. This is the importance of the continued checking. Or I might take too much. In order to keep control, you have to know how.
I’m not into fancy terminology. Cardiovascular, glucose, amputations. No. If we’re going to talk about that here, I’m going to tell you, “Check your blood sugar on that little machine there that goes ‘beep’ because if you don’t your sugar will go up, you’ll poison yourself, have a heart attack or get your leg chopped off. Better yet, you might just go blind, get a bunch of sores on your body and not be able to have sex any more. Eh?” At least, that way, you’ll understand what I’m telling you.
So let the flood gates open! Ask me questions. I have a lot of different stories when it comes to diabetes, so I’ll be posting them all here. I’m also going to start doing research on methodologies and things like that because everyone wants to know, and I have no answers because there not released to the public (among other things).
I’m not a doctor, nor a diabetic educator or a nurse. I’m a human, peer who lives with the same disease and disorder that millions upon millions of people live with in this country. Although I have Type I diabetes, I CAN answer questions about Type II.
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Diabetes Types A Blog 