Thoughts on Living with Diabetes

Late last week I was diagnosed with Type 2 Adult onset diabetes. Given my family history and lifestyle, I was not surprised by the diagnosis.

I expected to be depressed, even morose over it. This is, according to my doc and the American Diabetes Association, a very common reaction to an initial diagnosis. With my history of depression, and the "I don't give a virgin rat's ass about anything!" apathy I usually feel when I'm depressed, two words come immediately to mind: "death spiral."

The funny thing is, I'm not depressed. I'm not sad. I'm certainly not happy about it, but I'm not going to waste energy I could be using in taking my meds and measuring my serum glucose in raging against something uselessly.

So, I learned this week to measure my blood sugar level and to inject insulin (yes, the docs have me on two kinds of insulin and oral Glucophage™ both) . . . and the long term consequences of not doing these things.

Here's my selftalk:
Watching my carb intake is inconvenient, but so is peripheral neuropathy.
Sticking myself and drawing blood is a bitch, and so are slow-healing wounds.
Needles and lancets scare me, but so does losing my vision.
Checking my sugar is not fun, but being an amputee is even less fun.
Since I cannot defeat it by confrontation, live with it by adapting intelligently.

And, so far, I'm doing pretty good. Day 1 was a bit shaky, with glucose levels over 200, but I buckled down and I'm back to the happy 100-150 range. As of this writing I have not had to inject any regular insulin today.

Thank Goddess for the salad bar at work!