Living Alone & diabetes….was (tip of the day highs & lows)
Hello Jen, Lori,
I lived alone for a third of my life. Good & bad, many fears, even one or two related to diabetes ; )
There are GOOD habits and BAD ones…
Myself I was once in the Boston Joslin Clinic for a “tune-up” (education update) and one of the unit nurses stopped in and watched my injection procedure per their protocols. She watched for a minute or two and in a friendly way asked why I was ~taking so long~ to inject. We chatted about it for a while again in a friendly way and she suggested I was showing signs of being diabetes burned-out.
I’d done it a very long time, was self-conscious about having a Diabetes Nurse Practitioner scrutinizing my technique (unthinkable), but at the core of the issue was I was tired of doing this to myself. It kept me alive yes, but I didn’t like it any better. The home testing machines I hated even more, but understood the necessity solely for dosage calculations. Only as many times as I took shots…
They gave me a few new toys and insisted I use them for a while (a much smaller needle, an auto injector) and after a few weeks I kept the smaller gage needles but stored the injector, to remind me of my headspace then. Of all the classes taken the Mental Health component was the most valuable and far and away the most productive. (As most folks here realize essentially “they” haven’t changes the death, gangrene, dismemberment speeches since the 70’s by in large…. the dietary lecture now they have two parallel systems, etc., etc. essentially the same basic stuff unaltered too much in 30 years….)
How do others here tell, when the way you or I do something “diabetic” is…. maybe something deeper that can be changed for the better? Meaning a “habit” which on the surface seems ok, but underneath is a different issue thats worthy of exploration, changing?
Difficult question, but thought ~I’d take a shot~ ; ) [Sorry… didn’t mean that really : ]
PS Apologies for asking now as I’ll be offline for several days, but hopefully we’ll have a chance to check-in from time to time, hopefully jump back in <ws
Jeff (the trouble maker)