i want to live a life Unlimited by D. i have found that there are so many things that feel and seem like i can’t do. i am learning daily on this incredible site, that i truly can live a life Unlimited, however, there are many things i have to do to get there. so many experimentations, so much “research” and trial and errors. and i know that “errors” are really educational, but they are still very emotionally challenging.
this subject is merely to share whatever experiences you have had that cause you to feel the frustrations and emotional ups and downs that you have with living with D, or if you have a child who needs to have you help them manage their D.
please share. i would like to know that we are bonded together; that none of us are alone.
I think for me the frustrating thing is that I sometimes feel we can have blood sugar that is in range or we can live life without thinking about diabetes, but that the combination is difficult to achieve.
Actually, I find nothing about being diabetic frustrating. Sure, sometimes it acts unpredictably, but life in general can sometimes be unpredictable.
I look at it very objectively. It’s a set of circumstances that are a part of my life, and of me. I simply must do a few things every day in order to not have it affect me adversely. Thankfully I have been able to live with it for 46 years with no complications.
I am more limited by being 5’10" instead of 6’11". That debility limited my being able to be a pro basketball player.
When I discover something that works and am enthusiastically telling people how well it works and am met with “that wouldn’t work for me” it frustrates me
Stereotypes about diabetes frustrate me somewhat, not in that I actually think they’re incorrect, I just think I don’t have time or patience to educate everyone I meet on different types of diabetes etc so I just usually don’t even mention that I have any type at all even when T2s around me are talking about how they bake all their cakes with Splenda instead of real sugar and how well that works
It frustrates me how much of my mind and mental capacity has to go towards staying on top of my blood sugar, and there are no breaks.
i feel the same way; that there are no breaks; it just goes on and on and on… i’d like a week of “freebies” in which i could do whatever i wanted without having to think for one single moment about all the things i think about while i am D.
That is exactly the approach the my son’s diabetic camp takes for the week. The only decision they have to make is what they want to eat, and the rest is done for them. It is a really nice break for all involved.
I honestly hated diabetes camp when I went one summer as a kid, but I know I’m in the minority. I felt like my diabetes was such a focus there in a way, whereas when I went to regular overnight camps (which I also did), yes I had to do more myself, but none of the focus of activities or anything was on diabetes. Also part of it was I knew a lot about my disease even at age 12 or whenever, and at the diabetes camp, they would be teaching us stuff or telling us to do the stuff that I knew was wrong or out of date or oversimplified to the point of being less useful, and that was so frustrating. At my other camps, everyone else including the nurses knew I knew my own disease better than they did and therefore by default trusted me more. I ended up deciding I’d rather go to camps where the focus was on interests I had, rather than my disease.
That’s interesting. My son did not want to go to diabetes camp this year. But he came back loving it and wanting to go back next year. I think it is because the camp focuses on activities, not on diabetes.
Hopefully they’ve gotten better since I went! Also I think in general, treatment protocols are so much more flexible and varied now that maybe they are better on that side of it as well. Back then, the only differences were whether you took Lente or NPH and exactly what your sliding scale and meal exchange plan was.
Sorry to hear about that. My son loves it, but they don’t teach diabetes, they just let them have fun and do a bunch of activities. The whole point of our camp is to give the kids a week “away” from diabetes. They go from one activity to another from dawn until 10 pm doing camp stuff. Swimming, archery, soccer, camp games, fire pits, nature walks, etc.
They decide what they want to eat and a physician tells them how many units to give (pump) or hands them a syringe with the dose already drawn (MDI). between meals there is mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and before bed snacks. It truly is a week away for everyone.
