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Words of Wisdom |
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Weaving diabetes into the fabric of your life You can’t separate diabetes from your life. You have to weave the diabetes into your routine and make it part of your life, just like brushing your teeth or getting up to go to work in the morning. It’s just part of the fabric of what you do and who you are. I think if you take that attitude, it's much easier to live with. -FatherDiabetes is a way of life for us. Don’t try to withhold any information from them or pretend that the diabetes is not there. I think knowledge is power. That should be true for a child with diabetes as much as it is for anyone else. -Father Don’t put limitations on your children that have diabetes and try not to make them feel like diabetes is a day-to-day disease, because it’s really not. They are as normal as anyone else. By monitoring the right way and doing exactly what the pros recommend; it will feel no different and you will get more relaxed. -Father Do the research on your own. The more you know about it, the more comfortable you will become with it. You won’t be staying up all night sick and nervous worrying about if you are making any errors or if anything is going to happen throughout the night. It’s going to become a lot more comfortable to you and it will be like second nature. -Father You have to look at the big picture All the way up until the first few years we had a log of how many carbs were consumed, how much protein; exactly what he had. Did he have a cup of cereal for breakfast? Did he use skim milk with it or whole milk? Did he have anything on the side? Did he have half a banana? Just everything he consumed throughout the day, other than water was logged in; even diet soda even though it has no sugar. You can actually read back yourself, without being a doctor, and realize on these certain days things were better. In the beginning, we looked at it short term. We were looking at it day by day and some days he was a little bit lower than others having the same meals, but then we figured, you’ve got to look at the big picture. It’s the whole week—it’s the whole month that actually coincides with everything. So you got to kind of fine-tune the engine and just push forward and find out what really works for him. -Father Encouraging improvements in diabetes management My grandmother died of diabetes when she was 57, and she had type I diabetes since she was 17. She was using glass syringes, bovine insulin, and she was doing a urine test once a day to try to figure out how much insulin to take. She tried to manage it as best she could, but it wasn’t all that long ago when I was teenager and I saw that happen, to the treatments that they have today. They are just centuries apart in terms of the capabilities to manage diabetes, so it’s very encouraging. -Father I encourage people to look at the websites like the Diabetes Foundation website. They have the latest breaking news, information, and facts. If you don’t feel that your child is getting the best care or treatment, do your own research. People have to be proactive when taking care of their children. -Mother Educate people, train people, train family members so you can go out because you need to go out. We have not and it’s because we haven’t had the time to train people. -Father One of the things that I’ve learned from the past year and half is that if the blood sugars go up once—as long as it’s not a pattern—don’t worry about it. Just live your life. Just think that that blood sugar is going to be better next time. And if it gets bad next time, then call the nurses and the doctors and then they will help you with that. But never, never, ever worry too much about it and live your life. -Father It’s not the end of the world. I guess that’s kind of how I felt. Like, things are going to suck. It’s the end of the world, but it’s not. Kids with diabetes can still live a pretty normal life. Immanuel still plays sports. They can still do stuff like that. -MotherKnow that the diabetes is going to be there forever, first of all. And then it’s not like you have to worry forever because if you do the treatments good and you’re working with your child, your life is going to be normal, very normal. -MotherEverybody is different and it’s not going to be 100% everyday. Expecting your child to be a certain number everyday, all day, everyday, when it’s not going to be--you get stressed out. There is variation. -Mother For the whole first year I felt very inadequate, like “Why am I finding it this hard when everyone else can just do it?” And then you come to find out that people just are afraid to say how hard it is. They’re ashamed and so they deal with a lot of the fear, anxiety, or sadness by themselves. So I also wish for people to be easy on themselves, and to understand that the learning curve is steep, but once you get it, it gets so much easier. -Mother Diabetes care: An evolving process One of the things that happens is that you learn a lot at the beginning of the diagnosis and then you kind of get into a rhythm, and you find that you’ve perhaps have fallen into negative patterns, where you’re not fixing things and you’re not continually changing. I believe that diabetes care, especially if your child is growing and aging is an evolving process. -Father It's okay and it could be worse. Your kid is going to get through it, and you’re going to get through it. Everybody is going to be happy, healthy and normal having gone through it. Just hang in there. There are people going through exactly what you’re going through, and every once in a while, I’ve had to hear that echoed back to me to realize that I’m not doing this in a vacuum—that I’m not the only one out there. -Mother
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Hospital Boston Department of Psychiatry. All Rights Reserved. The information on this website should not be taken as medical advice, which can only be given to you by your personal health care professional. Updated: June 8, 2009 |
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