To pump or not to pump: My last a1c was the worst one of the bunch so far at 6.6. i was thinking about the pump, but I just don't want the baggage. i'm nervous about how the injection site works, having something constantly in your tummy fat and and i feel lazy about climbing the learning curve. i'm also pretty sure that making my wardrobe pump friendly will be difficult at best. i think i'll wait and hope for the omnipod to get smaller...and slowly eliminate any lycra from closet.
Diagnosed in your 20s club: I thought I was the only one. It's juvenile diabetes. Why would I suddenly develop a disease that's supposed to reveal itself in childhood in my 20s? And so I started to find people online and discovered the diverse d-bloggers. Sure enough, crunching some numbers in my head, I found some people diagnosed as adults. I wasn't alone. And now (unfortunately) I'm in prominent company with Jay Cutler (quarterback of the Broncos) being diagnosed at 25 years old.
It's been two years with diabetes. People who know me well know that I've only been struggling with this for two years. Most of the people I work with don't know this is a relatively recent event for me. A part of me really resists sharing the fact that I'm a new diabetic. It's almost easier letting people think that I've had it since childhood. Somehow a part of me thinks that it's more acceptable or easier to explain...it's more "normal." And also, if I had type-1 from a young age, I'm just as "good" now as I was then. This idea is hard for me to express. Many of my big accomplishments and milestones (graduating from college, working my life away in investment banking) happened when I didn't have diabetes. A part of me wonders how diabetes would have affected my life had I gotten it earlier. Maybe I wouldn't have achieved as much as I did. Maybe I can't handle stress and hard work the same way any more. There's this doubt and negativity that just clouds everything, even though I know (or try to convince myself) that it's not true. A major impetus of my most recent job change was wanting to have a job where I could put myself and health (mental and physical) first while diabetes was new. I didn't feel like I could do that working long hours and weekends.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
If you're ambitious and accomplished without diabetes, I am pretty sure you would be the same with diabetes. Learning about a new diagnosis is a learning curve, to be sure, but as someone who was diagnosed as a child, I am definitely accomplishing the same things, personally and professionally, that I would have without the disease.
I was just diagnosed 2 months ago at the end of my senior year. At first I was worried it would affect my graduation and post graduation plans, but then I realized it made my school life better. I had to be much more organized, had more energy because I ate healthy and really cut down on the binge drinking. I'm sure you would have accomplished the same with diabetes earlier and I bet you might even accomplish more
Oh yay - I'm not the only one who prefers people to think I've had D since I was a kid... I thought I was totally alone on that one!
For some reason I always expect people to only know about type 2. And then I expect them to know it wrong - y'know, they only seem to hold on to the idea that you have to eat bad and be lazy to have diabetes. And then I expect that if I tell them I got Type 1 in my adult years, they'll assume I'm making it up and it's really this imaginary idea they have of type 2.
Totally expecting the worst from people - but unfortunately that's what I see in a lot of cases. Sux, huh!
Well anyways, I figure they're never going to know any different if I don't open my mouth a little more. It really doesn't matter what they think anyway!
Even though I'm trying to be more 'straight' about my diabetes, I still feel nervous when I tell them I was diagnosed as an adult. Weird!
I also was diagnosed in my 20s. Thank god for the internet and blogs (including yours). I have had many of the same feelings as you. All my big milestones so far were pre D. I too wonder if things would be different if I had been diagnosed as a child.
I do feel the need to emphasize that, I was diagnosed, as an adult, with Type 1, not Type 2.
Post a Comment