Diabetes vs. Diabetes

As you probably know by now, I have diabetes. What you may not know is that there is more than one type of diabetes. In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of three.

Gestational diabetes is something only pregnant women get. There are several factors that can lead to it, but according to WebMD only about 4% of pregnant women get it. And even they are smug.

To the three people who get that joke, Garfunkel & Oates thank you. For the others? YouTube.

Type 2 Diabetes is the one that most people have. In fact, over 90% of people with diabetes have Type 2. Type 2 is preventable. A healthy diet and active lifestyle go a long way, and if you're lazy and eat nothing but fast food Type 2 diabetes is likely to be in your future. Before anyone flies off the handle, not everyone with Type 2 diabetes is obese and lazy, but a sedentary lifestyle and poor eating habits can definitely lead to diabetes. Type 2 diabetes can be controlled with diet, exercise, and some medications. It can also be controlled with insulin, which is why they shy away from calling it non-insulin dependant diabetes anymore. There are other factors that can lead to Type 2- including a family history of diabetes.

I have Type 1 diabetes. Interestingly enough, according to WebMD, most people with Type 1 have no family history of diabetes. (My paternal grandmother had Type 2, but other than that? Just me.)When I was a kid people always assumed I'd eaten too much sugar and given it to myself. Considering I was 14 months old when I was diagnosed, I think we can safely say that overindulgence on chocolate had little to do with it. The truth is that my immune system went all Kill Bill on my Islets of Langerhans (the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin). Viola! Diabetic.

It's all very wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

 

Both Type 1 and Type 2 are serious, and untreated will lead to a whole grocery list of miserable complications, and even death. But the key word for me is preventable. I don't know what I could have done, or what my parents could have done, to stop my immune system from going wiggity wiggity whack on me. But if your doctor tells you to shape up and eat more greens or face diagnosis, I think it's safe to say that you had fair warning. Also, I was just informed by a friend (and my husband, who knows just about everything, confirmed this) that people with Type 2 diabetes who have undergone gastric bypass have been known to be cured. (Whether because of a strange self healing the body does when you slice open and refit a person's stomach, or because once you've had gastric bypass you have to change your diet dramatically I'll let you decide on your own.)

 

I probably sound unsympathetic to the 90% of people with Type 2. I am in some ways. I had a coworker several years ago who was a Type 2 diabetic. (One of my other coworkers referred to him as "that damned New Yorker.") He was overweight, didn't eat right, and didn't exercise, but he complained to me that his doctor wanted to put him on insulin. I told him he should take his meds, watch his diet and exercise to keep that from happening. He didn't, and while I felt his pain, I also felt he was an idiot. Some people, and not just Type 1 diabetics but some Type 2 diabetics, too, just don't have the option to "turn it around."

 

I don't know exactly what it's like to have Type 2 diabetes, but I imagine that the logistics are fairly close to being Type 1. You have to eat right. You have to check your blood sugar. You should maintain some level of exercise. And that's not easy. You've got no idea what it's like to have a high blood sugar until you've had one, and man do they suck. You feel like absolute crap. Tired. Thirsty. Nauseated. Weak. Irritable. Who the hell wants to exercise or eat healthy when you feel like ass? No one. Not even me. Especially not me. I'm the Queen of Lazy even on a good day. I procrastinate like it's an art form.

 

(insert snarky caption here at some point)

 

But I tell you what, if my doctor told me tomorrow I wouldn't have to wear a pump or do blood tests if all I did was follow a specific diet and exercise everyday, that elliptical machine of mine wouldn't have a spec of dust on it and I'd be eating exactly what I was told to eat. Would it be easy? Hell no! Would it be worth it? Abso-frickin-lutely.

 

When I got my first job with my current employer they fingerprinted me for a background check four times. Each time my fingerprints came back because they could not be read. I'd done so many blood tests over the course of my life that I had no fingerprints. I ended up having to have my fingers laser scanned four years into my career. My arms and legs and stomach are all misshapen with scar tissue from years of shots and insertion sets. I've already got a little bit of diabetic retinopathy starting in my eyes. And even with diet and exercise, I'm still jamming a tube into my stomach every four days, and having to give insulin, and not always doing a great job of things.

 

In spite of my unsympathetic tone, I'm actually glad most diabetics have Type 2. That means many of them have the opportunity to reverse the effects of diabetes and get themselves back to normal. One of my co-workers asked me the other day if I'd gotten any comments or feedback from Type 2 diabetics on this blog. I haven't really addressed the differences before, so I'd be interested to know what people have to say.

 



That's just sick!

I have a head cold.

I really hate being sick. I don't know too many people who enjoy being sick, actually, but for diabetics in particular it really sucks. For starters, try reading the label on that cough or cold medicine sometime.  Do you know how much sugar they put in that stuff to make it "taste good"? Fortunately, there's stuff like this on the market:

 It tastes bad and usually costs more, like everything that's good for you.

 

I've actually given myself a really massively high blood sugar sucking on throat lozenges, which are often little more than medicine flavored candies. As I usually feel awful when I have a high blood sugar to begin with, adding the sniffles to it only makes it worse. And while my body is fighting off this cold with an already weakened immune system, my blood sugar is going to be naturally higher because apparently you burn calories when your immune system goes to war with germs. It's almost Mother Nature's way of kicking me while I'm down.

 

Fortunately, this is only a head cold. The stomach flu is infinitely worse for me, even if you don't take into account that I'd rather watch an episode of Barney than throw up on any given day.

 

 

Actually, that pretty much equals the same amount of barfing.

 

 

Imagine, if you will, giving yourself a dosage of insulin to cover the food you just ate like a good little diabetic. Now imagine your body has decided the food you just ate is not welcome to stay in your stomach, and after making a donation to the porcelain god, you now have insulin coursing through your system with nothing to do except make your blood sugar sink down lower and lower while it looks around for the food that is no longer there. The thought of eating anything makes you want to double down on that donation you made earlier. What do you do?

 

 

Always good advice.

 

You stay calm, get some anti nausea liquid and pray that the toast stays down long enough to make a difference, that's what. The towel you should always have anyway.

 

My biggest problem with being sick is that being sick always breaks any good habits I've managed to get started. When was the last time I exercised? Before I started dealing with this head cold, which I've actually been fighting off now for over a week. How's my diet going? Feed a cold and starve a fever, man....and I don't have a fever. It takes a while to get a good habit going, and one bout with the sniffles to send it packin'. That is annoying.

 



Even more annoying than this. Seriously.





 

So being sick makes my blood sugar go high, can be hard to treat with regular over the counter medicines, throws off my groove, and makes me feel sick. Being a sick diabetic takes a little more planning than grabbing the tissues and watching daytime TV in your TARDIS robe all day. Luckily I've had plenty of years to learn what to do and how to compensate. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

For those of you keeping score, that's another Hitchhiker's Guide graphic, an Animaniacs video,  andThe Emperor's New Groove and Doctor Who mentions. Barney doesn't count.

An anniversary, of sorts

Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes good...sometimes bad...sometimes both.

September 15, 1990, I went to my first concert. I was twelve years old and went to see New Kids on the Block with my mother, my little sister, and a couple of friends. I still have the ticket. I still remember most of the show.  I remember watching the New Kids on the Block cartoon right after the Beetlejuice cartoon that morning, and I remember getting dressed, and I remember dancing and singing my pre-teen heart out. One of the most memorable things about that day for me, though, was not New Kids related. That day, according to my mother at the time, was also the anniversary of my diabetic diagnosis. Or might have been. She wasn't completely sure at the time and I think that date may have been wrong, because September 15th of 1979 was a Saturday, like this year, and also strangely like 1990. (Then again my pediatrician employed my grandmother as his nanny, so who knows? It was around that time, at least.)

I found it on the Internet so it must be true.

 

Regardless of the accuracy of the date, every year since that particular September 15th (which was more years ago than I care to openly admit, and I do it now only for educational purposes) on September 15th I've thought about it. I don't remember the day my parents were told I had diabetes- I was only 14 months old. In fact, I don't remember living a day without diabetes at all, which can be rotten on one hand and nice on the other. I don't know what I've been missing. But I think about it, even for a few days before the 15th hits, because it's...I don't know. It's a mark. It's tangible. It's the day that before became after. Even though technically I still had diabetes before, on that date my parents knew, and like the G.I. Joes say, knowing is half the battle.

The other half is awesome lasers and stuff.

 

I guess this time of year I just take a while to pause and reflect on things. Most people do that around their birthday, but I do it around mid-September. Another year with diabetes gone, another year older.  My husband follows the diabetes news. He's always telling me about new advances in treatment, new theories on cures and stuff....I don't follow it. I guess I'm bitter. When I was a kid, it was "the decade of the cure." They were so sure when I was a kid that I wouldn't have diabetes as an adult...well, that didn't go as planned. Maybe someday I'll have another anniversary to reflect on- the anniversary of not having diabetes anymore. I'm not holding my breath. 

 

John Lennon sang, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." In a way I feel a little cheated that I never got to make plans before life slammed into me like a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, but it doesn't really matter. There are people with much bigger problems than mine, and even though I think about the before and after at this time of year, I've been a diabetic for over thirty years and I am in pretty good health, all things considered. So like I said, sometimes good...sometimes bad...sometimes both.

 

 

 

 

"...like having your brain smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick."

 

On a totally unrelated note, I'd just like to point out that I fit New Kids on the Block, Beetlejuice, G.I. Joe, John Lennon and Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  references in one blog. I win. :)

 





Start All Over Again

After my last bought with unconsciousness my doctor had me change the basal rates on my pump. A basal rate, for those of you who don't know, is the hourly rate at which my pump gives me insulin. For example, if my basal rate is 1.3, over the course of an hour my pump gives me 1.3 units of insulin. What's a unit? I don't know. I think they're like the cc's of a syringe.

Anyway, my basal rate was too high overnight, which meant I was getting too much insulin and I was crashing hard. Since making the changes I haven't really crashed too bad, though I was kinda low this morning (however, this was also the first morning in a week I've been able to sleep in past 7:30 because we've been dealing with plumbers, so the fact that I only rolled out of bed a couple hours ago may have something to do with that.) I have been running a little HIGH though, which is upsetting.

Yeah. Like that.

 

I wish that I could get this right all of the time. I wish I could get out of bed in the morning and find my blood sugar at 100...and then make it all the way though the day and find that it has pretty much stayed there. I wish I could eat what I want and not have to guess if the carbs are going to break down right now, like when I eat bread, or three hours from now, like when I eat rice. I wish that every little thing that happened during the day didn't make my blood sugar do something completely unexpected. But wishin' don't make things happen, and I haven't been making things happen lately, either. If life is like Oregon Trail, then I fell off the exercise wagon before the wagon even made it to Ft. Laramie.

 

 

Twenty five years of playing this game I have never seen this screen before.

 

I have a bad habit of not wanting to do something if I'm not good at it. If I'm not going to be Ginger Rogers, I don't want to dance. It's part of my stupid perfectionism, which has been discussed at length before. It's not always a bad thing to want to be perfect, especially if I'm willing to work at being perfect, but the problem is I expect to wake up perfect and not have to work at it at all. Ginger Rogers may have been a fabulous dancer able to keep up with Fred Astaire, but both of them rehearsed long and hard to be able to do the things that they did. I mean, Fred Astaire destroyed pairs of shoes because he rehearsed so much even though he made it all look effortless, so clearly just being naturally talented wasn't enough for him.

 

Diabetes appears to be one of those things that I am not naturally talented at handling, so I have to put in the extra effort, and I admit here, now, on the Internet that never forgets anything, that I am not always willing to put in the work to be successful at it. It's hard to do everything my doctor says, follow a strict regime, eat the food I am supposed to and pass on the chocolate cake, only to fail. It's disheartening to know that no matter how good I am, how close to perfect I try to be, I can still wake up with fruit punch staining my pajamas and my husband staring at me with worry across his face.  It's Sisyphus all day, every day. No end, no win, no nothin'.

 

 

This lesson in Greek mythology brought to you by the Internet. 

 

 

This last week has been like that and I have let myself slide because it's easier than pushing the rock up the mountain only to watch it sliiiiiide back down. But I am not going to let myself be defeated. It's a new week, a new day, and another chance to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

 



 

Dancing versus Rock Pushing....at least dancing is more entertaining!



The Pump Club

I believe I've mentioned before that I've been on an insulin pump for the last seven years. If you've never seen one, this is an example what they basically look like:

Well defined abs not included.

 

As you can see, there's a little electronic gadget that looks like a pager with some neato buttons on it and a thin, clear tube that looks like it's taped neatly to a diabetic's belly. The tube is actually attached to a little plastic doohickey (technical medical term) that is inserted under the skin. I believe it is made of Teflon or something, and it doesn't hurt, though it is inserted via needle. In fact, you can poke me right where the insertion set is on my stomach and I can hardly feel it most of the time. For those of you squirming, know that I will take inserting a short, thin tube into my belly once every four days over inserting a short, thin needle into myself four times a day. And now you're squirming even more. Still, everyone who has insulin dependant diabetes should be on one.

 

Since I've been on the insulin pump my over all blood sugars have been better, I've been able to eat more or less depending on whether or not I'm hungry, and I've been able to eat whenever I want and not be stuck on a schedule dictated by when the long acting insulin I gave this morning is going to kick into action this afternoon. It has given me a freedom that I had not had for most of my life, and even though there are times I want to throw it across the room and watch it smash into a thousand tiny little pieces like the fax machine in Office Space, I wouldn't ever be without one again. I cannot stress this enough, and not to sound like a broken record, but everyone with insulin dependant diabetes should really be on an insulin pump.

 

 

Come to think of it, that wouldn't sound like much other than silence. *shrug*

 

Surprisingly, you don't see a lot of people wearing insulin pumps out and about. I know, because I look. Depending on what I'm wearing you may not even see that I have one on. It can be tucked into my pocket, tucked into my bra (not always comfortable but if I'm wearing a dress where else am I going to keep it?), or worn on my belt alongside my continuous blood testing monitor for a real Batman-esque look. The same is true of everyone else who uses one of these. With all the cell phone holders and mp3 players people have these days insulin pumps tend to blend in rather well.

 

But when I do see someone with one, or someone comes up to me because they see that I am wearing one, there's a camaraderie there that is kind of neat. What brand is that? How do you like it? How many days do you get out of a set? It's an immediate thing you have in common. I spent twenty minutes talking to a women in IHOP the other night about our pumps. I was doing a story time at a mall once and one of the dads in the audience started asking me questions about it because he had one, too. I can only think of maybe one other thing off the top of my head that is as good at breaking the ice as an insulin pump.

 

 



I literally added that video just because.

 



The Pump Club is kind of a rotten club to belong to, and it's one that I wish in many ways I didn't belong to, but it's nice to occasionally see someone else with a pump just so I can have a reminder that I'm not the only member. I often joke when my pump beeps that my pancreas is talking to me, or refer to myself as a bionic woman, or say my pancreas fell out of my pocket when my pump does the same, but joking and occasional irritation aside I love the little thing.